Four years later, in a street in Montreal. It had snowed uninterruptedly the day before, in fine dry particles, sifting noiselessly through the air, and filling it with prickly points--not the broad clammy flakes of an insular climate which loiter as they fall, and feel damp and clay-like beneath the passer's feet; but rather an attenuated sand or dust, dimming and pervading the day, and heaping itself in drifts which overspread and bury while you watch, yet cannot reckon how it is they grow. And then it is so dry in its exceeding coldness that it will not wet, and springs and crackles merrily under foot.
It was morning--not yet nine o'clock--and the snow shovellers were only beginning here and there to relieve the encumbered footways, and contribute another layer to the solidly-packed thicknesses of snow and ice which winter had been building in the streets, a foot or two above the neighbouring side walks. The snow had ceased to fall, and the laden clouds which had brought it having burst and dissolved themselves, the sky was a clear pale vault, filled with diffused and dazzling brightness.
From a door there issued a young girl, trim and slight. She was dressed in brown--brown close-fitting, warm and shaggy--muffled as to ears and chin in a wisp of "cloud" of the same colour, out of which there peered the daintiest little pink nose and a pair of eyes of merry blue, shining as they looked out from under the edge of her sealskin cap, with the gleeful twinkle of a squirrel's in the snugness of his nest. I would have said they were like fawn's eyes, save that it has a sentimental association which does not accord with Muriel Stanley, now arrived at the age of fifteen--the border land between child and woman--and fancy free. She stood on the doorsteps with a roll of music under her arm, and her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Muff she had none, it is in the way with active people who do their five or six miles on snow-shoes of winter afternoons, and "toboggan" down slopes in the moonlight.
The air was so chill it seemed to catch the breath on emerging from the indoor warmth; but it was so transfused with brightness and dancing sunshine that it sent the blood coursing quicker through the veins, and prickled in the nostrils with an exhilarating joy, like the sting of the air bubbles in effervescing wine.
The doorsteps were as yet unswept, and deep in snow, the shovellers being still a good many doors off, and Muriel stood on the top looking down and around ere she made the knee-deep plunge, when a voice accosted her coming down the street.
"Miss Muriel! yet surely not, at this hour of the morning."
"Yes, it's me, Mr. Gerald," she said, turning round. "What would any one stay indoors for on a jolly morning like this?"
"But you do not go out at this hour of the morning in general?"
"Neither do you; I know that much. We see the business people go past--M. Petitôt and the Ferretings--about half-past eight, but you gentlemen of the Stock Board never by any chance before half-past ten. If I were a man, and lazy, I would be a stockbroker. No going back to the office in the evening!"
"Ha, ha! you are severe this morning. Does that come of being out so early?"
"That? Oh! I have to go for my music lesson this morning; if I am to have one at all. Mr. Selby has fallen on the ice and sprained both his ankle and his wrist. I have a note from him, written with his left hand, asking me to come to his house, as he cannot come to me--written with his left hand, actually; think of the trouble it must have cost him!--so I could not refuse to go."
"Poor old Selby! I did not hear of that. He is my uncle, you know, or at least he is married to my aunt. And Judy--Mrs. Bunce, I mean--is there just now, with Betsey, to show her the gaieties of the city. Nice house to see the gaieties from. They will consist of amusicaleat Counter Tenor's, the dry-goods man, and one or two select performances of the Classical Quartette Club. Betsey's mind won't be unsettled by the dissipation, I guess. She won't leave town thoroughly dissatisfied with country life. Then again, what a pretty specimen of musical culture poor Betsey must be for Selby to lead around. I can imagine his being silently thankful for the sprain as an excuse to stay at home. Just come in the nick of time. However, as my mother was saying to me, though somehow it seems to have slipped out of my mind, we must do what we can for Betsey. If sheisa rumpty-tumpty little thing, with her hair always lying the wrong way, she can't help it, and Uncle Bunce is not half bad--for a parson. I have it! I shall go in with you now, if you don't mind, find them all at breakfast, like an intimate and affectionate nephew--it will save more valuable time in the afternoon--and offer to take Betsey to the Rink to-day at three or four o'clock--that is, if you will promise to be there. But let me see! Have I time? Ah, yes! Twenty minutes to spare before I am due at Hammerstone's."
"Hammerstone's? Professor Hammerstone's? Is it a breakfast? Do you attend scientific breakfasts?"
"No. But I study the sciences, though perhaps you would not think it. You see we have so much to do with mineral lands, mines, metals, and that sort of thing, that the governor thinks it is worth while for me to try and find out what it all means. Those sharks, the experts, impose on you so abominably if you do not know something of what they are talking about. So I go to Hammerstone for an hour three mornings in the week, if I get up in time; and really it is more interesting than you would suppose. It is settled, then, that you will be on the Rink this afternoon?"
"I scarcely think it. Mr. Considine is coming to drive us out this afternoon."
"Considine! Phew--But gooseberries are not in season at this time of year! He! he!"
"I do not understand. I said we were going for a sleigh ride."
"With Considine? Will it not be rather cold work sitting with your back to the horses while the old chap makes--conversation--to the Miss Stanleys?"
"Aunt Penelope is afraid to venture out these cold days."
"Just what I said about wholesome summer fruit. That old Considine must be a sad bore, running out and in so much to one's house--like a tame cat."
"Mr. Considine is very nice. I like him. He is so good-natured, and he never says a word against people in their absence."
"One for me! But heisa good fellow, and I fancy you are not the only Miss Stanley who thinks so."
"How slippery it is! You turn off here, I think, to go to Professor Hammerstone's, do you not? I hope you will not be late. Thanks for carrying my music; I will take it now."
"But I mean to carry your music all the way, Miss Muriel. As I told you, I am going to look in on my three aunts at breakfast, and ask them for a cup of hot coffee. That will have a good effect on my aunt Judy, who I fear suspects me of being not very steady. She is a great promoter of coffee taverns. Tried to start one at St. Euphrase, I believe, and had to drink all the coffee herself because thehabitantswould not buy it. She will say I am an improving character if I ask for a cup of coffee."
When Muriel had finished her music lesson and was resuming her gloves and cloud, she found herself caught from behind by a pair of short fat arms in a sort of hug, accompanied by a little scream of enthusiasm.
"Muriel! And were you going away without ever asking to see me?"
Muriel turned in surprise. "Betsey Bunce! But I did not know you were in town till an hour ago. You know you never wrote."
"Wrote! What is there to write about at St. Euphrase?--unless I were to walk up to the farm and ask Bruneau about your cows and chickens. But you knew an hour ago, you say, and yet you were going away without asking for me. I call it real unkind."
"It is only ten o'clock, you know--far too early an hour for calling."
"You are so particular! Just like an old woman--and a stiff old-country woman, too--Miss Penelope all over."
"I hope so. Aunt Penelope is always right."
"Come in now, anyway, and take off your things. I am dying for somebody to talk to, after sitting round the stove for three days with three old women. What with Mr. Selby's bandages, and embrocations, and Miss Susan's neuralgia, and Mrs. Selby's poor health, this house is worse than a hospital. Auntie likes it first-rate; she enjoys giving people physic, and says it was a Providence which brought her here at this time; but I find it real lonesome. I have read through the only two novels I can find, and I declare my back aches with sitting still and doing nothing. Couldn't we go down town by-and-by and look at the shops? Let me help you off with your jacket. Fur-lined, I do declare! Cost twenty dollars, I dare say. Thirty was it? You're the lucky girl! Never mind fixing up before the glass, you're all right--here's a pin if you want one. Wherever did you pick up that cunning neck-ribbon?--lady bugs and grasshoppers--I call it sweet. It would just suit my geranium-coloured poplin! By-the-way, do you think that will do for evening wear, if I am asked anywhere? It is made with a tablier--looked scrumptious the night they gave charades at Madame Podevin's boarding-house. Mdlle. Ciseau cut it out for me, and I run it on the machine myself--fits like a glove. But your city fashions are so different, one never can be sure. We will go upstairs and look at it; but first you must come into the Snuggery and see the old ladies."
The "Snuggery" was at the back of the house, a sort of family room in which strangers were not received. It had been the chief apartment of the old log homestead which preceded the existing dwelling. The logs had been found so sound and the chamber so desirable that it had been suffered to remain, and been incorporated with the "frame" building erected in front, which it promised to survive, and last on in solid stability when the lighter structure of posts and boards should have fallen to pieces. It was cooler than the rest of the house in warm weather, and warmer in cold; built of twelve inch logs carefully jointed together, plastered on the outside, panelled and ceiled within with red pine highly varnished, and floored with parquetry of different native woods. It had a window on each of three sides, flanked by heavy curtains. There was no fire-place, but in the centre an old-fashioned box-stove, capable of holding billets from two to three feet long, and whose great black smoke-pipe pierced the roof like a pivot for the family life to revolve on.
A bear skin and rugs lay about the floor, sofas and tables stood by the walls, and round the domestic altar, the blazing stove, were the rocking-chairs of the three sisters, gently oscillating like pendulums in a clockmaker's shop, and making the wooden chamber feel like the cabin of a ship, heaving and swinging on a restless tide.
Muriel was greeted effusively by Mrs. Bunce, who looked more fidgety and alert than ever in that reposeful place, and then she was presented to the sisters. Miss Susan, swathed in quilted silk and webs of knitting, a bundle rather than a person, and immersed in her own misery far too deeply to feel or to excite interest in a stranger, merely bowed and shuddered at the breath of cooler air which entered from without; but to the other, Mrs. Selby, Muriel felt strongly drawn, and pleased in a strange and restful way to feel the gentle eyes of the sick and rather silent lady dwelling on her with wistful kindness. She was tall and pale, and in the cross light of windows admitting the dazzling reflections from the snow, and among the browns and yellows of the wainscoting, there was a lambent whiteness which associated itself in Muriel's mind with those "shining ones" she had read of when a child in the "Pilgrim's Progress," and filled her with pleasant reverence.
The lady scarcely spoke, spoke only the necessary words of welcome to a stranger, and then withdrew from the hurry of Betsey's and Judith's eager talk, sitting silently by and looking on the new comer with gentle earnest eyes. In the focus of streaming daylight and backed by russet shadows she sat and looked, wrapped in her white knitted shawl, and with hair like frosted silver, features and hands delicate, transparent, and colourless like wax, and eyes which had the weary faded look which comes of sleepless nights and many tears. She found it pleasant to sit and rest her eyes on Muriel, so elastic and freshly bright, as she chatted with the others; she felt as when a breath of spring comes rustling through the dead and wintry woods, through sapless withered twigs and fallen leaves, whispering of good to come, and sweet with springing grass and opening buds.
She scanned the girl's face and guessed her age, and then her thoughts went back across the years, the weary sunless years which had come and gone since her joys had withered, and she could not but think that had her own lost daughter been spared, she would have been nearly of that age now, and perhaps she would have been gay and bright and sweet as this one was before her. Her eyes grew moist, but it was with a softer, less harrowing regret than she had hitherto known, more plaintive and almost soothing in its sadness. The girl looked so innocent and free of care, with low sweet laughter coming from a heart that had never known sorrow or unkindness. It did her good to watch, and made her feel more patient in her long and weary grief.
For the others, they had their own affairs to make busy with, and it was not every day they came to town. What interest, either, for them, could there be in the emotional variations of their silent and always sorrowful hostess? She had suffered--though it was fourteen years since then--and of course they "felt" for her; but there is a limit to sympathy as to all things human--if there were not, life would be unbearable--and to see her after so many years still cherishing the olden sorrow had grown tedious, if yet touching after a sort, and the family had grown to disregard it as a settled melancholy or monomania, to be pitied and passed over, like the deafness, old age, or palsy of family friends. So Betsey and her aunt had settled themselves one on either side of Muriel "for a good old talk," as Betsey said, and they talked accordingly.
"I shall come round to-morrow morning to see your aunts," said Mrs. Bunce, "and spend a long forenoon with them," and so onad infinitum.
A letter was brought in while the talk was in full swing.
"An invitation!" cried Judith. "Mrs. Jordan--requests the pleasure--a juvenile party. Well--I declare!--Betsey, we forgot to bring your pinafores--or should it have been a certificate of the date of your birth? A very strange way to pay attention to their rector's wife and niece! I thought Mrs. Jordan would have known better."
"Aunt Matilda and I are going," said Muriel in astonishment. "It was very nice last time. More than a hundred, big and little. They had the band, a splendid supper and lots of fun. Indeed, Aunt Penelope was almost unwilling I should go this time; it was so late when we got home."
"Very proper, my dear; I quite approve. Young people should keep early hours; but, you know, Betsey is a little older than you are. Not much," she added, as prudence pointed to the day, only a year or two ahead, when it would suit Betsey, if still a young lady, to be no older than Muriel--"still she is in long dresses, and it seems odd to invite her the first time to a child's party."
"They are not all children. Tilly Martindale, for instance, is as old as Betsey. So is Randolph Jordan himself and Gerald Herkimer."
"Willtheybe there?" cried Betsey kindling into interest. "We'd better go, auntie, there's no slight. I see the sort of thing it is; there are a few little girls--biglittle girls though, all the same--to give it the name of juvenile and take off the stiffness. Just like the candy pulling we had at Farmer Belmore's. You know Farmer Belmore's, Muriel? He lives just across the river and down below the island at St. Euphrase. His son's family from Michigan were with him in the fall, and his wife and daughters are toodévotesto meet their neighbours, and are only waiting his death to go off to the convent. However, the old man--and a good Protestant he is--was determined the children should have a good time, so he gave--a candy pulling and invited everybody for miles round--said it was for the children. So we all went--drove across the river on the first ice of the season--whether we knew Mrs. Belmore or no. And, Muriel, we had just the most too-too time you can imagine. The daughters sat in the back-room with one or two old French women, away from everybody, and the eldest granddaughter received the guests. There was a fiddle, and, oh, just a lovely time! Joe Webb and I pulled the whitest hank of candy in the room, and we danced eight-hand reels and country dances, till one of my shoes gave way and I had to sit out with Joe Webb. It was something beyond, I tell you!"
"Tush, Betsey!" said her aunt. "You are in the city now and must not go into raptures over rustic frolics, or people will think you know no better. I shall ask the Miss Stanleys about this, when I see them to-morrow. They will be able to tell me if we had better go, and how you should dress."
"Dress! Haven't I my geranium poplin?"
"But this istown, my dear, which may make a difference; one never knows. Inmyyoung days, now, I always wore white muslin and a blue sash! And you cannot think how many civil speeches I used to get" added the old lady, bridling, with a spot of pink on either cheek and a toss which set the treacle-coloured curls quivering. The war-horse is never too old to prance and champ his bit at the sound of the trumpet, though he may be so old that no one can remember his ever having been in action.
"I do not remember ever seeing geranium poplin at a party," said Muriel, looking to Betsey; but her eyes fell before the glance of displeased superiority she met there.
"You have not seen my dress, or you would speak more guardedly. Besides, you are not out yet, and cannot be expected to know what goes on at fashionable gatherings."
"No," said Muriel, meekly, "I am only a little girl, I know that. Still, at the juvenile parties I go to--Mrs. Jordan's, Mrs. Herkimer's, and the rest--and at our parties at home, thoughtheyare not balls by any means--quite small affairs--the people dress very nicely--velvet, satin, lace, and so on--but I never saw a geranium poplin."
"No! Poplin is only coming in! I know that from 'Godey's Magazine.' It was just a mere chance Quiproquo of St. Euphrase having one dress piece. I bought it, and you cannot think how rich it looks. Cut square!--they are all cut square in the higher circles this year--with elbow sleeves and a fall of rich lace at twenty-five cents a yard."
Muriel held her breath at the catalogue of rustic splendour. She would have liked to say a word in mitigation of the fright she feared Betsey was intending to make of herself, but dreaded to have her youth flung in her face again. The young are so ashamed of their youth while they have it; it is only after it has fled, that, like flowers drooping in the midday heat, they sigh for the dried-up dews of morning which erewhile weighed down their heads with mistaken shame.
There followed more talk of millinery, and then it was time for Muriel to go, after effusive farewells and appointments for future meeting. Mrs. Selby came forward last, when the more boisterous adieux were over. She would have liked to take this young girl in her arms; she felt so strongly drawn to her, and knew not why; but she restrained herself, and only begged her to come often while Betsey remained, and to be sure to come to the family room in passing, next time she came for a music lesson. And Muriel, looking in the face of the whitened lady, so venerable and sweet, not only promised--as in good nature she could not avoid--but really intended to fulfil, promising herself pleasure in doing it.
A great rise in the world had come to Cornelius Jordan, Q C. They seem all to be Q.C.'s, my reader, those lawyers in Canada; or more than half of them. The Queen is so remote a centre, that the beams of her favour are very widely, if thinly, spread, and this especial title of honour has come to be regarded as a polite and inexpensive attention which new prime ministers make haste to bestow upon their friends. And there are so many prime ministers, that at last it became a ground of dispute, between the minor premiers of the several provinces, and the premier-major at Ottawa, as to which should have the exclusive run of the alphabet for decorative purposes. Mr. Jordan, I repeat, had risen since we met him last at the Misses Stanley's garden tea. Then he was a rising man in his profession, doing well, and in comfortable circumstances; now, he was one risen--full head and shoulders above his fellows, living in a house of the very largest size, and with horses and servants to equal the most prosperous of his neighbours, and reported to be wealthy; not with the startling but evanescent opulence of the merchant prince, which to-day is, and to-morrow is nowhere; but with the reality which attaches to professional wealth in the popular mind, as money actually coined from a man's own brain--the golden fees raked in from grateful clients--without risk, and irrespective of rising and falling markets. His name was spoken with that slight involuntary pause before and after which carries more distinction than any title; it is a form of respect so undefined. "What a man he must be!" his neighbours said, "to have made so much money, and made it so quickly!" made it at his profession, too. Nobody doubted that, for his name was never mixed up in other affairs.
It would have been hard guessing for aquidnuncabout the Court House, had he attempted to trace how all that prosperity had been built up out of the fairly good solicitor's and conveyancer's practice carried on at his chambers, or from his not unusually frequent or brilliant appearances in Court; though now that the fruits of success were so evident, these were vastly on the increase. "Ah!" those knowing ones would say, "he is not a brilliant speaker; but sound, sir, sound! What a head for Law the man must have! What clearness of understanding, to have realized such an income. What a style of living he keeps up! How many thousands a year does it take? Quite the leading counsel at our bar." And so clients multiplied, and the suitor whose case failed in his hands felt surer it had had the best presentment than he would have felt had it succeeded with any one else. "If Jordan could not win the suit, pray who could?"
Jordan was liked, too, as well as respected. How could he fail of that? At his dinners, given every week all through the winter, were found the choicest bills of fare and the best people, and every one else was invited to share the feast. It is manifest that one cannot talk unkindly of a man while the flavour of his wine still hovers about the palate--so long, that is, as there is prospect of another invitation. When the last dinner has been eaten, and the last bottle of wine drunk, then truth is apt to come up from the bottom of her well--disturbed, no doubt, by the pumping, when the family is forced to resume water as a beverage--and people's memories become wonderfully refreshed. They recollect--the women, that is--that really the man's wife was not a lady, that things were said at the time of the marriage, and there has been such levity and extravagance since; while the men shake their heads in cynical wisdom. They knew it from the first, and wonder how it has gone on so long, and how a fellow like that could have had the effrontery to entertain their high mightinesses so profusely.
For the present, however, if there was any unacceptable truth at the bottom of Jordan's well, she had the kindness to remain there, well out of sight. The hospitalities proceeded in a genial round; every one was proud to assist at them and spoke highly of the entertainer.
Considine was the only man who had a misgiving, and he kept his doubts and surmises to himself, hoping he was in error. He was associated with this man in many ways; and nothing is gained by letting slip an insinuation against a friend, even if good feeling did not stamp the act as abominable. His own conscience, too, was not at rest in the matter, for the expansion appeared to him to date from very shortly after the change they had adopted in managing the Herkimer Estate. He reproached himself constantly for having consented to sell out the old man's investments, and wondered how he could have been tempted by those miserable brokerages to smirch the honest record of a lifetime. No doubt there had been considerable gain on the new securities purchased with the moiety of the funds which he administered; but what of the other half? Jordan had displayed so implicit a confidence in his judgment, such complete beautiful and gentlemanlike faith in his probity, waiving explanations, motioning off statements with expressions of unbounded reliance in his ability to do what was best, while really "in the press of other matters he had no leisure for unnecessary examinations into matters on which he could not advise," that Considine was completely silenced, and was left no opening to claim reciprocal explanations as to how the moneys in Jordan's hands had been applied.
He heard on 'Change now and then of Jordan granting short loans at fancy rates, and of his "doing" paper which was far from being "gilt-edged," and he thought of that other moiety of the Herkimer fortune. Such operations are not the way in which trust moneys are used for the benefit of the trust; but rather one in which, while loss, if there be any, must needs fall on the trust, the extra profit accrues to the trustee. And what other funds could Jordan have to operate with? Considine knew of none but those which should have been otherwise employed, and for which, he himself would be held responsible if any misadventure were to befall them, and the sum was so large that in case of a catastrophe his own poor little fortune would go but a small way to make up the loss. He could contemplate that with comparative patience--though certainly it would be hard, after the labours and vicissitudes of a lifetime, to see the provision for his declining years swept into a pit, and one not of his own digging--but disgrace would accompany the ruin; that was the intolerable thought.
To finish a life in which he had striven to keep his hands unsoiled and his name without reproach as a defaulting trustee! How he had been wont to scorn such, when they crossed his path! And to think that he should end in being classed with them! Who would stop to inquire into the merits? Had he ever himself stopped to sift the intricacies of a defalcation, before declaring the defaulter to be a rogue? Had not the money been confided to his care, and was he not responsible for it to the heirs? Many a night when he lay awake in the darkness, with nothing to break the stillness but the ticking of his watch at the bed-head, the misgiving and the dread would waken in his mind, and possess him with the restless misery of an aching tooth, which would not be dulled or forgotten, toss and stretch himself as he might; and he would vow in desperation to go down the first thing in the morning and have it out with Jordan; and so, at last, he would fall into a dose, as the grey twilight was stealing on the night.
In the morning his resolution would be with him still. All through dressing and shaving he would feel determined "to have it out with Jordan," and he would run over in his mind the points of his unanswerable argument on which his co-trustee must needs be caught, and compelled to the fullest explanation, clearing away another expected sophism in the defence, with each scrape of the razor on his chin. When he descended to breakfast, however, the morning papers, the smoke of the coffee, the greetings of his fellow-boarders in the hotel, would gradually lead him back to the tone of every-day life and its amenities, and then his intentions would grow less stern. The trenchant points in his argument would grow dim before his eyes, and he would recollect how many things there might be to say on the other side. Perhaps, too, he might have been misinformed as to something, or he might be under some misapprehension--for who, after all, can tell the true inwardness of his neighbour's affairs until death or bankruptcy overtake him?--and how very uncomfortable his position would then be! In what an ungenerous, nay, churlish light he would be exhibiting himself before this most open-hearted and genial of all his friends! Indeed the prospect was not pleasant; then why should he force an interview and place himself in a false position? Was it not a shame in one claiming to be "high-toned," a soldier and a Southern gentleman ofante bellumtimes, to harbour injurious suspicions of a friend? "He must be bilious this morning--want of exercise. He would ride off his megrims in a two hours' gallop."
And so the days would pass in struggles to drive away the doubts which returned but the more persistently with darkness to spoil his sleep, till at length, in dread of their nightly upbraidings, he would nerve himself to the ungrateful task and stride down to Jordan's chambers, frowningly constraining himself to anticipate the worst, if only to keep his courage from oozing away, as it sometimes would, when he reached the office door, leaving him to turn aside at the last moment and retreat ignominiously into his club, there to solace his drooping self-respect with brandy and soda. When, however, in sterner mood he persevered, it was still not always that the much-engaged lawyer could be seen. He was busy upon a case and could see no one; a client was with him, and two more were waiting their turn for an audience, or he was in court, and Considine--not altogether sorry at the respite--went home in comparative relief. He had done what he could, at least, and surely now the suspicions would leave him for a night or two and let him sleep in peace.
Once or twice, by a lucky chance, he was able to catch the busy man at a vacant moment intrenched behind black bags bursting with briefs, volumes of consolidated statutes, and calf-bound authorities.
"Ha, Considine!" he would cry, in a tone almost too jolly for "the profession" in business hours, "so glad to have been disengaged when you called! See you so seldom. Sit down, old man, and tell me what I can do for you. Don't hurry, I am at leisure now--that is to say, for the next four minutes and a half," he would add, pulling out his watch. "Am to see the judge in chambers just five minutes from now. But take time, I can run down in thirty seconds, so you have good four minutes and a half. So glad you dropped in when I was at leisure."
Then Considine would hesitate and grow confused. He had charged batteries of artillery in his day, had "difficulties" on Mississippi steamboats, which were afterwards arranged with six shooters, "each to go on firing till one dropped," and he had never flinched from his task or quailed before antagonist. But how call this man antagonist? He seemed more ready to embrace than to fight. It was grievous to see him so friendly, and made our warrior feel but a shabby fellow with his inquiries and questions, which would sound so like insinuations, and might wound the genial soul which bore him so much goodwill. Being in for it, however, he must go on. It would never do for a Mississippian to run away, even in honour's cause. He pulled from his pocket a list of the bonds and debentures he held under their joint trusteeship.
"I want you to examine this list of securities, which I keep in my box at the Bank of Progress, and indorse your approval on the back, if you do approve, and we can go over to the bank and compare the papers with the memorandum any day you find convenient."
"Tush, man! It's all perfectly right, I am quite certain. I have every confidence in you, General," declining to receive the paper.
"But I really wish you would look at it. I feel this irregular responsibility unpleasant."
"Bosh! it's all regular enough among friends. You know Ralph Herkimer this ever so long, and I should hope you knowme!Imagine either of us getting ugly, and blaming you--whom the testator trusted so entirely--for anything you may do. No, no! And really, you must excuse me, but I cannot afford to muddle my head with unnecessary figures--even to please you! I need, all my clearness for the delicate questions which arise in my practice. I abominate figures at all times, and never tackle them unnecessarily."
"But ought not I to affix some sort of approval to the mortgages you have bought for the estate?"
Jordan lifted his eyes to the other's face, in gentle wonder, as a good man might when wounded rather than offended by an unlooked for aspersion on his honour; and Considine, confused and abashed, stopped short, and then floundered on again:
"I mean it, of course, in no distrustfulness--for what should I distrust?--but just so as fairly and fully to divide the responsibility in case of the heirs desiring to call us to account."
"I really do not know," answered Jordan, matching his voice to the look of mild disappointment without reproach which the other found it so hard to bear up under; "I really don't know. I have not considered the point. It did not occur to me that you would wish to enter into the intricacies of titles in this country, which is a comparatively old one, and the tenures bear no resemblance to those of Mississippi, where I am told you go back only to General Jackson. Our system of law, too, is very different, being derived from the French, and not from the common law, as with you. No! It did not occur to me that you could possibly wish to enter into these mysteries. Our period of trusteeship, too, is drawing near its close. Three years, I should suppose, would conclude it; though I cannot speak precisely without reference to the will, and the date of Mrs. Selby's marriage. Will the study of our Quebec land-system repay you, do you think? And our friend Ralph is so entirely satisfied. Why should you bother?
"But we are not responsible to Ralph."
"No, not exactly. But it will be his boy Gerald, which is much the same thing. The lad goes into partnership with his father shortly, so their interests are identical; and it would surprise me to be told that Master Gerald did or knew anything but what his father told him. A nice boy. Wish my scapegrace was as manageable."
"I have never felt sure of that--of Ralph's boy being heir, I mean. There has been no proof of the missing infant's death; and where there is money the claimant seemingly never dies, but is always reappearing when least expected. But if, as you anticipate, it is to be Ralph we shall have to make up accounts with in the end, I am not confident that we might not have trouble, if he saw an opening for complaint. I have known him long, as you are aware, he is a fine man for business--none better--and has made a handsome fortune, but I had rather not be in his power."
"No fear of that! I fancy I know blaster Ralph, too," pulling out his watch, "but there are few men of mark, especially in business, whom we lawyers cannot lay a hand on, when necessary, to keep them quiet. His bark would be worse than his bite in our case, for I think I know where to light on a muzzle that will keep him quiet enough. Time's up, I see. If you are bent on overhauling those papers of mine, why not come up to dinner some evening? We could do it far more comfortably with the help of a glass of sherry and a good cigar. What day will you come? Friday? Or, let me see, what are you doing this evening? Come up to-night. Half-past seven, sharp. Good-bye, for the present. So glad you are coming."
And Considine would go as invited, and would find a number of other guests assembled; and Jordan would be all geniality and pleasure at having him; but never an allusion to business would escape his lips, nor would they find themselves alone together, even for a moment, till the evening was spent and it was time to go home. And so it fell that Considine's anxieties, while seeming to himself to require but one vigorous effort to end them, were never resolved, but hung about him vague and undefined, like the beginning of a low fever which has not as yet pronounced itself; causing restlessness and care, but bringing also a habit of acceptance which enabled him to live his life in spite of it, only with a diminished relish. His distrust wore in time out of the acute into the chronic form; and it is remarkable, with time, how much of anxiety a healthy man can work through, and apparently be none the worse. Endurance brings a kind of strength to the mind like that which persistence does to the body, when the arsenic eater, after having consumed ounces of the deadly stuff, becomes able to swallow with impunity more than would have killed him not so many months before. The gouty and the rheumatic, too, how long they live!--live and enjoy even, somewhat, through their sufferings.
And in some such fashion Considine lived on, in moderate comfort and prosperity, with the shadow of possible ruin in the back-ground; always felt, but not so strongly that he must disturb the daily furniture of his life by an effort to exorcise the demon; which is a state of things not so very different from what the rest of us endure. We have our threatening shadows too, loss, disease, madness, not so very far off, and always the dismal shade of Death himself looming up behind and dwarfing all the others; yet, like the people before the flood, we manage pretty well to comfort and amuse ourselves in the present.
Considine solaced himself not unsuccessfully under his cares. He had naturally much of the wise vegetable enjoyment of existence, and things conducing thereto, eating, smoking and gentle exercise, which is natural to the country bred more than to those brought up in cities. He had 'Change through the day to gossip and lounge upon, and his club in the evening. He had opportunities too of going into society, even if he did not make the most of them, and very frequently he would spend an hour in the Misses Stanley's drawing-room, sipping tea and talking over the news. He had fallen into the way of spending the hot months at St. Euphrase, just as those ladies spent the cold ones in the city. Their migrations agreed pretty closely in time, and both he and they, owing to years and circumstances, being somewhat out of the swim of busy life, found it pleasant to sit together on the banks, as it were, and watch the gambols and antics of those younger and brisker, who disported themselves in mid-current.
The ladies had come to town the first winter solely for their niece's education, but the following year they undoubtedly had their own solacement quite as much in view as her improvement. The tranquillity and repose of their rural life was if anything too complete, and after having once broken it by wintering in the city, it would have felt like returning to bed after lunch to have remained in the country all the following year. There is a feeling of companionship to be derived even from the faces of our fellows as they pass us in the street, which is pleasant to such as have been leading secluded lives, and it takes months for this mild excitement to lose its relish; but it will grow tame eventually, and so, too, will the morning calls among ladies of a certain age. Humanity being in two forms, which combine with and supplement each other to constitute the perfect whole, a social circle composed of one kind alone must needs be incomplete, tending to limpness if it be feminine, to hardness if all of men.
The day for flirtation and matrimonial intentions may be over, but still the habits and tastes formed in that brighter time survive, even when incorrigible celibacy has caused society to pass by the offenders as hopeless subjects. Fortune, by endowing a young lady with competence, grants her the privilege to be unworldly or critical, so that she lets her precious springtime pass unused. The privilege is by no means an unalloyed boon as the years go by. She finds herself inadmissible to the conclaves of matrons of her own age, where husbands, doctors and children are discussed with freedom; yet her god-daughters and nieces can scarcely be expected to accept her as a compeer; she is ademoiselle passée, an outside hoverer on the confines of social life, with the gay bachelors of earlier decades who are still unwed, and whom society passes by as obdurate and hopelessly unavailable for matrimonial use.
It is pitiful to see these disappointed "have-beens," with their relish for youthful pleasures still unslaked, flitting in a disregarded twilight, like Homer's ghosts, while the reviving blood of the sacrificial bull is quaffed by other lips. Well for them, is it not, if they can make up a little party among themselves, and by keeping each other in countenance, contrive to ruffle it without ridicule among the younger revellers?
And so, from mutual convenience and sympathy, Considine and the Misses Stanley became fast comrades. In their drawing-room he could drink a cup of tea with the ladies whenever he had a mind, and they were sure of an escort for the evening when they so desired.
In spite of her pretence to make little of an invitation to a juvenile party, the prospect of that gaiety took strong possession of Betsey Bunce. Mr. Selby's lameness had prevented his taking her anywhere or affording her opportunity to spread her plumage among strangers; which, indeed, was all the satisfaction which could have accrued from going out with him, she not being musical, and he very little else. Betsey's dissipations, therefore, had been of so meagre a kind that she might well set store by Mrs. Jordan's invitation; it would at least, she told herself, be an opportunity to show people that she was fit for better things. Her cousin Muriel had told her she might expect to meet a hundred guests or more, and surely they would not all be children, though poor Muriel was too young perhaps to know; but, at least, both her Montrealbeaux, as she choose to denominate Randolph Jordan and Gerald Herkimer, would be there. So she made no doubt of having a "good time." The image of Joe Webb rose before her mind's eye as that idea occurred to her, and he seemed to her to look reproachful. "Poor Joe!" she sighed to herself, glancing archly in her glass; but Joe was fifteen miles away, and Betsey fancied herself a heart-breaker. "A girl can't help these things," her thoughts ran on; "and Joe has never said a word--though I can tell by the sinking of his voice when he speaks to me, he would say plenty if I just gave him encouragement. Poor Joe! he's too modest. Thebeauxwon't need encouragement! I guess I shall rather have to make them stand off a bit--at first, that is, they ain't going to think they are to have it all their own way with an Upper Canadian, even if shehasmoved down to St. Euphrase. Nice fellows both; but such awfuldudes!When they walk down the street of St. Euphrase in their cricketing suits, the sidewalk don't seem broad enough to give them both room. And my! don't thehabitantsstare at them? I kind of like adude, or I almost think I could bring myself to like one," and as she glanced in the glass again, she coloured half shyly before the intelligence in her own eyes. "Their gloves and their boots do fit so splendid! Their necks look tight like in the stiff collars, but their tongues wag freely enough--too freely sometimes, at St. Euphrase. They're real 'sassy' sometimes. But at a large party, no doubt they'll know enough to behave. No! Dudes ain't half bad. But these two hai'nt got the fine manly shoulders and strong arms of Joe Webb."
"Ah, how big he is! And how safe a girl would be with him to take care of her! To see him gather up the reins behind that young team of his in one hand, when they grow fractious, and lash them with the other till they simmer down like lambs! Poor Joe!" and she took another look at her all conquering charms in the glass.
Her hair--how should she arrange it on the night of conquest? There was searching of fashion magazines for something distinguished yet chaste. Many startling novelties, with much expenditure of time and hairpins, were attempted, with signal unsuccess; and it was only after every florid device had been exhausted, that she had at last to confess that a severe simplicity accorded best with her other charms; or to speak plainly was the only hairdressing she could succeed in.
These labours led to a more critical scrutiny of her complexion than she had ever made before. Hitherto she had accepted it like her other perfections in contented faith; but now, on closer observation, was there not just a suspicion of yellowness under the eyes--tan marks on the neck--a freckle or two across the ridge of the nose? Violet powder! that was what she needed, and forthwith she repaired to an apothecary, who, I fear, supplied her with other embellishments at the same time. It is certain, at least, that on the looked-for evening, when, after keeping her aunt long waiting, she at length came downstairs arrayed in all her glory, with shawl and hood carried in her hand, that the assembled family might have the privilege of a private view, before she set out on her career of conquest, Mr. and Mrs. Selby being in the hall and a maidservant near to open the door and catch a glimpse of the show, she appeared in one of those startling complexions which are affected by equestrian ladies of the circus, in which not the lily and the rose combine, but the chalk-ball and rouge contrast their rawness.
Mrs. Selby's mild and weary eyes opened in amused amazement, and her spouse coughed industriously behind his hand to stifle his laughter. Mrs. Bunce lifted her "pinch-nose" to her eyes in dismay and indignation.
"What is it? Who is it?" she asked, while Betsey simpered and tossed her head. "That I should live to see a clergyman's niece make a----"
"Guy of herself with violet powder and druggist's red," volunteered Mr. Selby. "It's a mistake, my dear Betsey, I assure you, attempting to improve Nature's choicest effort, the cheek of a pretty girl. It's like painting the lily--gilding refined gold."
Betsey turned wrathfully round, flushing scarlet here and there where the powder lay less thickly. "But perhaps he meant well, too," she thought. His concluding words implied a gratifying appreciation of her everyday looks; so she let it pass, and the angry red subsided from her forehead.
"Fie, Betsey!" continued the aunt. "There is scripture against such sinful interference with the natural complexion. Think of the wicked Hebrew queen."
"Who painted her face and was thrown out of the window," added Selby, with some irreverence. Poor man, he was apt to grow jocose.
"But, auntie, the fashion magazine says brilliant complexions are all the go, especially with simplecoiffures; and I am sure mine is simple enough--nothing but a bang, an Irish wisp, and--well, only three or four pads. In Europe, it is said, they use rouge and pearl-white quite freely. I have only put on a little powder."
"Alittle, my dear?" muttered Selby, half aside, "you look as if you had come out of a flour barrel--with the white flakes sticking all over you. It ought to be a fancy ball you were going to, and you to represent a snowstorm. The dust is flying from you every time you turn your head."
"Nonsense, George," said his wife. "You are vexing, and very ridiculous. Why tease the girl? We have all made mistakes of that kind in our day, Betsey, my dear. You should have seen Mr. Selby himself, when he was a young man, and wanted to look his best. He could hardly walk--he hobbled--from the tightness of his boots."
"You are mean, Mary, to go back to that. If I did, it was only when I hoped to walk or dance with you."
"And you would have danced far better if your shoes had been a larger size. But truly, Betsey, if you will try the effect of a wet sponge on your face, you will find your own nice natural colour infinitely more becoming."
"I am afraid it will make me awful pale. I'd hate to look pale alongside Muriel, her colour brightens so when she gets animated. And there's Tilly Martindale; perhaps she'll be there, and I guessshe'ssure to have a colour, however she comes by it."
"Theyare not in the Church," said Mrs. Bunce, grandly.
"Nor am I, auntie. It's apartyI'm going to." Public opinion, however, so freely expressed, had its effect, and Betsey returned to her room, to reappear more like her ordinary self, and accept with little satisfaction the congratulations and praises which good-hearted Mrs. Selby felt bound to shower upon her.
As the aunt and niece drew near their destination they felt their hack suddenly slow off into a walk. There was a sleigh in front of them, and when Betsey stood up, craning her short neck to reconnoitre, there was another in front of that, and another, and another. Then there were gates and an illuminated mansion beyond, up to which the line of sleighs was streaming, slowly and intermittently, as each in succession stopped to set down its load, and then vanished.
"I declare, auntie, we're in a procession! Ain't it cunning? and quite grand. The company will all arrive together, and there's no doubt they will make a grand entry, two and two with the music playing a march--just like there was in Tullover's Circus, last year, at St. Euphrase. Only we'll have to walk, on account of the stairs, and not having horses. I always knew it was the stage and the pulpit gave the law about speaking, but I didn't know before, it was the circus set the fashion for other things. Ain't it well, now, that I was there?--though you scarcely thought so at the time. You just keep as near me as you can, and I'll tell you what to do--all I know. But, to be sure, they'll be providin' us withbeaux, and we'll have to go wherever the gentlemen take us. Ah! When I remember the lady in the yellow satin riding habit, with the knight in steel button armour and the peacock plume! It was something beyond. I don't see why steel button armour should not go quite as well with geranium poplin as yellow satin. But knights, if there are any, won't wear their uniform at a private party, I'm afraid. The Queen makes them keep it for wearing at the palace, most likely; but it's mean of her, all the same. However, black swallow-tails look real nice, with almost any colour a girl can put on, and it's just the very thing to tone down my geranium colour, and make it look moderate."
There was no place for Mrs. Bunce to slip in a word as her niece ran on in a continuous monologue--soliloquy--rather, for she was merely thinking aloud, and her thoughts had grown so engrossing that she probably would not have heard, had she been spoken to. Presently the sleigh came to a final halt, and it was their own turn to alight and follow the stream of cloaked figures up the stairs. A counter-stream of those who had disentangled themselves, like moths escaped from the dusky chrysalids, and were rustling their airy glories into form, passed them on the banister side, while the arrivals not yet perfected in the cloak-room slunk upwards by the wall.
Betsey's breath seemed to forsake her in one little gasp of ecstasy. She followed her aunt upwards mechanically. Her consciousness had gathered itself into her eyes, and sat there all athirst, drinking in impressions from the novel scene. The scent of flowers was everywhere, and the sound of sackbut, psaltery, fiddle, and all that she could dream of festive music. Through the open doors below, as she ascended, appeared dancing figures, whirling and vanishing in endless succession. Lamps and glitter seemed everywhere, and gowns of every hue--a moving rainbow. She could only liken it to the description from a New York pantomime in that morning's newspaper of the "Halls of Dazzling Light." The hall-way, which she looked down on as she went up, was filled with people in evening dress, circulating to and fro, and a stream of people in festive array was passing her on the stairs--velvets, satins, jewellery, lace and flowers, not to speak of niceties in hair-dressing and general arrangement, which it had not hitherto entered into her mind to conceive, but were still so beautiful. She caught them all in the passage of her eye across that serried stream as she went up a flight of stairs. She was a born milliner, as the upper Canadiennie not very seldom is.
Mrs. Bunce and her niece had been almost the last of the guests to arrive, and had been long detained in the cloak-room by those finishing touches to their adornment over which it is by no means the young or the beautiful who spend the longest time. In the present case it was the treacle-colouredchevelureof the aunt which had come askew under the hoods and wrappings she had worn upon her head, and her cap secured in its place by many a hairpin required to be removed before the other invention could be adjusted. She lingered over minor embellishments till the other occupants had left the room, when she found some pretext to send away the attendant also. Then she sprang to the door and locked it, and turning to Betsey with startling vehemence, made her promise by all she held sacred never on any pretext to reveal or divulge what she was presently to behold. Betsey has kept her promise.
Whatever awful rite may have supervened has remained unknown. The maid at the keyhole saw moving figures, but what they were doing she could not tell, though the time allowed for observation was ample during which she was kept outside. Eventually the door was unbarred, and Mrs. Bunce came forth with the dignified self-possession of a well-dressed woman, Betsey followed, looking pale and anxious, as the inquisitive waiting-maid discerned, and with the far-off look in her eyes which the books tell us is worn by those who have come through a new experience.
They were so long of getting down stairs that Mrs. Jordan had left the doorway, in which she had been standing to receive her guests, and was now by a fireplace with some of her friends. It was necessary for Mrs. Bunce to cross the room, at some risk to herself from passing dancer's, in order to pay her respects. Betsey followed as well as she was able, but she did not reach the presence of her hostess.
From beyond the radius of a dowager in truffle-coloured satin drifting easily onwards in the same direction, in whose wake Betsey had found it safe and easy to steer her course among the throng--from out of the unknown region, which the bulk of truffle-coloured satin concealed, there came a whirlwind of palest blue, with silver chains and bangles tossing among curling hair, and smiles and dimples, revolving wildly with the music, and with a shock and a little cry there came into her arms--who but Muriel Stanley! The meeting was of the briefest. They had scarcely time to ejaculate each other's names ere Muriel's cavalier had his partner well in hand again, and they were gone, Betsey looking after them with all her eyes. It was Randolph Jordan who was dancing with Muriel, looking, as Betsey phrased it, "fit to kill," in his evening suit. One of Betsey'sbeaux!How engagingly she looked at him, and after him, out of her boiled gooseberry eyes--throwing glances of fascination which I fear fell short, or were not understood--with a simper on her round fat cheeks, and lips parted in smiles, displaying slab-like teeth.
"Whoever was that we cannoned off just now?" said Randolph, when his partner stopped for breath, "Curious looking person to meet at a party. Who is it? You seemed to know her."
"That was my cousin, Miss Bunce. You know her too--quite ready to know her out at St. Euphrase you seem. In your own house I should have thought you would know every one."
"There, now, I've put my foot in it. She's your cousin, she's all right of course. Don't be vexed, Muriel. But what makes her wear that horrid gown? I never saw anything like it."
Something stole into Muriel's eyes as she thought of the "geranium poplin," and how very superior its wearer intended to be when she put it on--"made with atablierand cut square"--but she checked the impulse, and only said: "Poor Betsey must feel herself a stranger here; I do not think she knows a soul but those she has met at St. Euphrase. I think I shall sit down now. No! Not another turn, I feel quite tired. Go and ask Betsey; you will do me a favour if you will, and then introduce a few gentlemen to her. Help her to enjoy herself. It must be dreadful to be so alone in a room full of people."
"You are hard on me, Muriel, to deprive me half my dance and then hand me over to--to-- If she were quietly dressed, it would not be so bad. She used to look quite passable at St. Euphrase in her cotton gowns; but the sumptuous apparel is really too dreadful. Every one will observe us. And see! I do declare she is ogling somebody up in this part of the room. Just look. Did you ever see such facial contortions? and what a mouthful of teeth! Like an amiable hyena, or the show-window at a tombstone factory."
"I am fond of my cousin Betsey, Randolph. If you do not hurry away to her she will lose this dance, and I shall be disappointed."
It was with tardy and reluctant steps that Randolph obeyed, but he had not to go far to meet the engaging Betsey. That young lady, watching herbeaufrom afar, saw Muriel led to a seat, and himself, after a few words of conversation, turn in her direction; and with the inspiration of conquering beauty, she divined that it was to her his steps were tending. And yet the steps seemed lagging even after they were disencumbered of the partner. They positively seemed to falter. Ah! poor young man, thebeauwas diffident--needed encouragement; and he should have it. It seemed to her tender heart to be no time for standing on punctilio. The young man suffered; and it was for her. That was enough.
She turned her steps to meet him as he came--meet him half-way, I might have said, had I been censorious--and as he came in view she smiled, smiled like a brimming tea-cup filled with sugar and water; and she spread her hands in welcome, spread them, that is, as to the fingers, she did not move the wrists, for, notwithstanding the certainty of beauty's intuitions, there is still the possibility that one may be mistaken, as Betsey had been ere now--and she stood with her eyes fixed on Randolph's countenance.
The look met him full in the face as he came before her, struck him as the jets from the fire-engines may have struck the Parisian mob which General La Moricière so cleverly dispersed without the help of steel or gunpowder; and he would have run away, but he could not. Not only was Betsey before him, but Muriel was somewhere behind, and both would have seen his demoralization. Betsey's eyes were beaming on him with a peculiar radiance. They swam, it seemed to him, in a shining wateriness, and with a light in which the green rays and the yellow blended as they do in an over-ripe gooseberry where the sun is shining, looking luscious, and not too cool--inviting, to those whose tastes that way incline.
The greetings between these two were not prolonged--the one had been ordered to give a dance, the other was eager to encourage abeau. There was a bow and a word or two. Miss Betsey's head lay back on her short neck as the gentleman's arm slid around her waist. Then, as she laid her little fat hand on his arm, her head rolled over to the other shoulder, and she found herself in the ecstasies of the mazy dance. She drew a long breath of delight, and leant just a trifle heavier on the strong encircling arm, when--crash! sharps and flats. Another chord--the music ceased, and--oh, bathos--she found herself standing on the train of a lady's gown, who was regarding her with a scowl, while she herself was pinned to the ground from behind in the same way, and she could not but dread how the hoof-marks would look on her geranium poplin.
It was Randolph's turn now to draw a breath of relief, and he looked over his shoulder to where he had left his little friend--little, not obviously in stature, but only because she still wore short frocks, though counting for more to him than all the grown-up ladies in the room. The feeling of holiday, however, was of short duration; he could read disappointment on Muriel's features, and when he gazed towards her as claiming thanks for what he had done at her behest, she looked another way, ignoring the demand. It was little satisfaction he could look for during the rest of the evening if Muriel were disobliged, and her present demand was one of those disinterested ones which must be fulfilled specifically and cannot be made up for, or "squared" by attentiveness in other ways; therefore, as one who can not make a better of it, he turned to Betsey, regretting that their dance had been cut short prematurely, and begging that the next might be his.
Betsey was nothing loth. Thebeaumust be very far gone indeed, she thought, and she could not but cast a backward and regretful glance of her mind to Joe Webb, Gerald Herkimer, and several others, taking them all pell-mell and quite "promiskis," as she pronounced the word. However, she could only have one, she knew that; and she intended to take whoever offered first, if he was eligible, and not run risks by "fooling" after the rest. So much for being practical-minded and not idiotically in love, except with one's own sweet self!
Randolph resigned himself to work out his dance conscientiously, but without enthusiasm. Her waist was so far down that he would have to stretch to get steering leverage upon this rather compact partner, and as has happened before to many a tall youth with a stumpy fair one, he had a presentiment that his arm would ache before the exercise was concluded. In walking round the room, however, before the solemnity commenced, he caught so pleasant a smile of thanks from Muriel over his lady's head that he was consoled, and set himself manfully to perform the task before him; the more so, perhaps, that Muriel was sitting, and though he would not have owned to grudging her a pleasure, it pleased him best when she danced with himself. He had kept more than half his card free from engagements, that she might have plenty of dances, and his mother was looking for an opportunity to take him to task for the horrid way in which he was neglecting her guests. He would have been less content could he have looked back and seen the alacrity with which she rose a moment later when Gerald Herkimer came forward to claim her. Of all the "fellows" in the room; Gerald was the only one as to whose standing in Muriel's good graces he had a misgiving.
The dance began, and Randolph found he had not under-estimated the work before him. Betsey was positively festive, exuberant and unconfined, on the very top rung of her gamut of feeling, as she bounced and caracoled along. She could dance, of course--every Canadian woman can dance--but she possessed a solid massiveness peculiar to herself, and really remarkable in one of her size. Randolph found there was little he could do but merely hold on. Strain and adjust himself as he might, the centre of their joint equilibrium would not be brought under his control. Betsey seemed totally inelastic, and her ballast was in her heels. "Hefty" was the word a Vermont cattle dealer had used to describe her action after a dance at St. Euphrase. Deviously she pranced, a filly whom no rein ever invented could be hoped to guide; and as the rapture of the music wore into her soul, she threw herself back on poor Randolph's arm with anabandonand an entirety which made it feel strained and paralyzed for long after.
"Oh, Mr. Jordan," she cried, when at last the poor fellow was compelled to stop; "you seem fairly done up and out of breath. For me, now, I feel fresher, I do declare, than when we started off."
"Small wonder," thought Randolph, "after making me all but carry you completely round the room;" but he said nothing, merely looking at the half-paralyzed hand and finger's of his strained arm, and wondering how long it would be before he should be able to use them.
"You're a lovely dancer," the Syren resumed. "Reely, too--too--awfully nice for anything. Something quite beyond! But to think ofyourbeing tired! And here's me, a fragile girl, feelin', I declare, just as good as new, or rather better! Now, if you would like to go on again, I'm quite ready," and she drew herself up ready to relapse on the manly support of Randolph's arm the moment it should come behind her.
But it did not come. Randolph observed that it was very warm; "had they not better walk to the other end of the room?--they might be able to find ice there, or something to drink;" and he led her round the outskirts of the dancers. The dancers were all intently engaged, disporting themselves some more and some less deftly, but all as best they could, and Betsey eyed them enviously, glancing reproachfully on herbeau.
And then there passed them a pair which drew the eyes of both, it passed them so easily, so lightly, so swiftly, like a curl of blue smoke across a wooded hillside, and it was flown, like the crotchets and semi-quavers in a bygone bar of the tune--a waft upon the air, they passed so lightly, passed like the music, leaving but the memory of glancing smiles as the music leaves a sense of sweetness when it has ceased.
"Was that not Muriel went by just now, and Gerald Herkimer?" asked Betsey.
"I think so," said Randolph, with just a tone of sulky disgust in his voice.
"I wonder at Penelope and Matilda bringing a child like that to a ball like this. It's real bad for young children bringing them forward so soon--just tempts people to think them old before their time; and if Muriel takes after her aunts, she'll have plenty time for parties before she marries, even if she came out three years late in place of three years too soon. I doubt if she is fourteen yet."
"Oh, yes, she will be sixteen next July, she told me so herself."
"A great age. But still she shouldn't be here to-night at a grown-up dance."
"This is a juvenile party. Miss Bunce."
"Muriel is the only juvenile I see, and she seems to be carrying on just like one of the grown-ups--all but the frock. She has on a short frock, I'll admit that, and I don't see another in the room but her own."
"The juveniles are in the ball-room. Perhaps you have not been there yet. Would you like to go? This is only the drawing-room with the carpet up, for a few grown-up friends of my mother's--a mere side show. Let us go and see the children. You will find Miss Matilda Stanley there, and have an opportunity to give her your views about Miss Muriel's nurture."
"Oh, pshaw!" cried Betsey, in deep disgust. It was really too tantalizing to have secured a splendid partner for a round dance, to have been checked in full career before the dance was a third part over, to have been led away under the promise of ice cream and something to drink; and if there was anything Betsey liked next best to dancing, it was ice cream, with red wine after--not claret by any means, but something sweet, warming and--if not exactly strong, it would be so horrid to like anything strong--at least able to communicate a sensation of strength or general betterment. To have all these delights dangled before one's eyes, and then to be led away to look at a parcel of children, who should have been in their beds hours before, dancing the polka! Oh, no! Betsey felt she was being wronged. If she were not to have her dance out, at least she should get the bribe she had been promised. She would be so far true to herself as to strike a blow for the ice cream. It was easily done. She observed to Randolph that she felt a little faint, and really the roomswerewarm. He acquiesced at once. So long as it was not to dance, he would do anything for her. And so they sat down snugly enough near a refreshment table and tried to be comfortable.