“COME in! I want to talk to you!” said Mrs. Aylett, beckoning Mabel into her chamber, from the door of which she had hailed her. “Sit down, my poor girl! You are white as a sheet with fatigue. I cannot see why you should have been suffered to know anything about this very disagreeable occurrence. And Emmeline has been telling me that Mrs. Sutton actually let you go up into that Arctic room.”
“It was my choice. Aunt Rachel went along to carry the light and to keep me company. She would have dissuaded me from the enterprise if she could,” responded Mabel, sinking into the low, cushioned chair before the fire, which the mistress of the luxurious apartment had just wheeled forward for her, and confessing to herself, for the first time, that she was chilly and very tired.
“But where were the servants, my dear? Surely you are not required, in your brother's house, to perform such menial services as taking food and medicine to a sick vagrant.”
“Winston had forbidden them to go near the room. I wish I had gone up earlier. I might have been the means of saving a life which, however worthless it may seem to us, must be of value to some one.”
“Is he so far gone?”
The inquiry was hoarsely whispered, and the speaker leaned back in her fauteuil, a spark of fierce eagerness in her dilated eyes, Mabel, in her own anxiety, did not consider overstrained solicitude in behalf of a disreputable stranger. She had more sympathy with it than with the relapse into apparent nonchalance that succeeded her repetition of the doctor's report.
“He does not think the unfortunate wretch will revive, even temporarily, then?” commented the lady, conventionally compassionate, playing with her ringed fingers, turning her diamond solitaire in various directions to catch the firelight. “How unlucky he should have strayed upon our grounds! Was he on his way to the village?”
“Who can say? Not he, assuredly. He has not spoken a coherent word. Dr. Ritchie thinks he will never be conscious again.”
“I am afraid the event will mar our holiday gayeties to some extent, stranger though he is!” deplored the hostess. “Some people are superstitious about such things. His must have been the spectral visage I saw at the window. I was sure it was that of a white man although Winston tried, to persuade me to the contrary.”
“It is dreadful!” ejaculated Mabel energetically. “He, poor homeless wayfarer, perishing with cold and want in the very light of our summer-like rooms; getting his only glimpse of the fires that would have brought back vitality to his freezing body through closed windows! Then to be hunted down by dogs, and locked up by more unfeeling men, as if he were a ravenous beast, instead of a suffering fellow-mortal! I shall always feel as if I were, in some measure, chargeable with his death—should he die. Heaven forgive us our selfish thoughtlessness, our criminal disregard of our brother's life!”
“I understood you to say there was no hope!” interrupted Mrs. Aylett.
“So Dr. Ritchie declares. But I cannot bear to believe it!”
She pressed her fingers upon her eyeballs as if she would exclude some horrid vision.
“My dear sister! your nerves have been cruelly tried. To-morrow, you will see this matter—and everything else—through a different medium. As for the object of your amiable pity, he is, without doubt, some low, dissipated creature, of whom the world will be well rid.”
“I am not certain of that. There are traces of something like refinement and gentle breeding about him in all his squalor and unconsciousness. I noticed his hands particularly. They are slender and long, and his features in youth and health must have been handsome. Dr. Ritchie thought the same. Who can tell that his wife is not mourning his absence to-night, as the fondest woman under this roof would regret her husband's disappearance? And she may never learn when and how he died—never visit his grave!”
“I have lived in this wicked world longer than you have, my sweet Mabel; so you must not quarrel with me if these fancy pictures do not move me as they do your guileless heart,” said Mrs. Aylett, the sinister shadow of a mocking smile playing about her mouth. “Nor must you be offended with me for suggesting as a pendant to your crayon sketch of widowhood and desolation the probability that the decease of a drunken thief or beggar cannot be a serious bereavement, even to his nearest of kin. Women who are beaten and trampled under foot by those who should be their comfort and protection are generally relieved when they take to vagrancy as a profession. It may be that this man's wife, if she were cognizant of his condition, would not lift a finger, or take a step to prolong his life for one hour. Such things have been.”
“More shame to human nature that they have!” was the impetuous rejoinder. “In every true woman's heart there must be tender memories of buried loves, let their death have been natural or violent.”
“So says your gentler nature. There are women—and I believe they are in the majority in this crooked lower sphere—in whose hearts the monument to departed affection—when love is indeed no more—is a hatred that can never die. But we have wandered an immense distance from the unlucky chicken-thief or burglar overhead. Dr. Ritchie's sudden and ostentatious attack of philanthropy will hardly beguile him into watching over his charge—a guardian angel in dress-coat and white silk neck-tie—until morning?”
“Mammy is to relieve him so soon as he is convinced that human skill can do nothing for his relief,” said Mabel very gravely.
Her sister-in-law's high spirits and jocular tone jarred upon her most disagreeably, but she tried to bear in mind in what dissimilar circumstances they had passed the last hour. If Clara appeared unfeeling, and her remarks were distinguished by less taste than was customary in one so thoroughly bred, it was because the exhilaration of the evening was yet upon her, and she had not seen the death's-head prone upon the pillows in the cheerless attic. Thoughts of poverty and dying beds were unseemly in this apartment when the very warmth and fragrance of the air told of fostering and sheltering love. The heavy curtains did not sway in the blast that hurled its whole fury against the windows; the furniture was handsome, and in perfect harmony with the dark, yet glowing hues of the carpet, and with the tinted walls. A tall dressing mirror let into a recess reflected the picture, brilliant with firelight that colored the shadows themselves; lengthened into a deep perspective the apparent extent of the chamber and showed, like a fine old painting, the central figure in the vista.
Mrs. Aylett had exchanged her evening dress for a cashmere wrapper, the dark-blue ground of which was enlivened by a Grecian pattern of gold and scarlet; her unbound hair draped her shoulders, and framed her arch face, as she threaded the bronze ripples with her fingers. She looked contented, restful, complacent in herself and her belongings—one whom Time had touched lovingly as he swept by, and whom sorrow had forgotten.
“Not asleep yet!” was her husband's exclamation, entering before anything further passed between the two women; and when his sister started up, with an apology for being found there at so late an hour, he added, more reproachfully than he ever spoke to his wife, “You should not have kept her up, Mabel! Her strength has been too much taxed already to-night. I hoped and believed that she had been in bed and asleep for an hour.”
“Don't blame her!” said Mrs. Aylett, hastily. “I called her in as she was proceeding to bed in the most decorous manner possible. I may as well own the truth of my weakness. I was nervously wakeful—the effect, in part, of the ultra-strong coffee Dr. Ritchie advised me to drink at supper-tine—in part, of the silly sensation I got up to terrify my friends. So I maneuvered to secure a fireside companion until you should have dispatched your cigar. Gossip is as pleasant a sedative to ladies as is a prime Havana to their lords.”
“And what is the latest morceau?” inquired Mr Aylett, indulgently, when Mabel had gone.
He was standing by his wife's chair, and she leaned her head against him, her bright eyes uplifted to his, her hair falling in a long, burnished fringe over his arm—a fond, sparkling siren, whom no man, with living blood in his veins, could help stooping to kiss before her lips had shaped a reply.
“You wouldn't think it an appetizing morsel! But I listened with interest to our unsophisticated Mabel's account of her Quixotic expedition to what will, I foresee, be the haunted chamber of Ridgeley in the next generation. Her penchant for adventure has, I suspect, embellished her portrait of the hapless house-breaker.”
“A common-looking tramp!” returned Winston, disdainfully. “As villanous a dog in physiognomy and dress as I ever saw! Such an one as generally draws his last breath where he drew the first—in a ditch or jail; and too seldom, for the peace and safety of society, finds his noblest earthly elevation upon a gallows. It is a nuisance, though, having him pay this trifling debt of Nature—nobody but Nature would trust him—in my house. There must be an inquest and a commotion. The whole thing is an insufferable bore. Ritchie has given him up, and gone to bed, leaving old Phillis on the watch, with unlimited rations of whiskey, and a pile of fire-wood higher than herself. But I did not mean that you should hear anything about this dirty business. It is not fit for my darling's ears. Mabel showed even less than her usual discretion in detailing the incidents of her adventure to you.”
Flattery of his sister had never been a failing with him, but, since his marriage, the occasions were manifold in which her inferiority to his wife was so glaring as to elicit a verbal expression of disapproval. It was remarkable that Clara's advocacy of Mabel's cause, at these times, so frequently failed to alter his purpose of censure or to mitigate it, since, in all other respects, her influence over him was more firmly established each day and hour.
Old Phillis, Mabel's nurse and the doctress of the plantation—albeit a less zealous devotee than her master had intimated of the potent beverages left within her reach, ostensibly for the use of her patient should he revive sufficiently to swallow a few drops—was yet too drowsy from the fatigues of the day, sundry cups of Christmas egg-nogg, and the obesity of age, to maintain alert vigil over one she, in common with her fellow-servitors, scorned as an aggravated specimen of the always and ever-to-be despicable genus, “poor white folks.” There was next to nothing for her to do when the fire had been replenished, the bottles of hot water renewed at the feet and heart, and fresh mustard draughts wound about the almost pulseless limbs of the dying stranger. She did contrive to keep Somnus at arm's length for a while longer, by a minute examination of his upper clothing, which, by Dr. Ritchie's directions, had been removed, that the remedies might be more conveniently applied, and the heated blankets the sooner infuse a vital glow through the storm-beaten frame. The ancient crone took them up with the tips of her fingers—ragged coat, vest, and pantaloons—rummaged in the same contemptuous fashion every pocket, and kicked over the worn, soaked boots with the toe of her leather brogan, sniffing her disappointment at the worthlessness of the habiliments and the result of her search.
“Fit fur nothin' but to bury his poor carcuss in!” she grunted, and had recourse to her own plethoric pocket for a clay pipe and a bag of tobacco.
This lighted by a coal from the hearth, she tied a second handkerchief over that she wore, turban-wise, on her head, mumbling something about “cold ears” and “rheumatiz;” settled herself in a rush-bottomed chair, put her feet upon the rounds of another, and was regularly on duty, prepared for any emergency, and to be alarmed at nothing that might occur.
So strict was the discipline she established over herself in fifteen minutes, that she did not stir at the creaking of the bolt, or the shriller warning of the unoiled hinges, as the door moved cautiously back, and a cloaked form became dimly visible in the opening. A survey of the inside of the chamber, the unmoving nurse and her senseless charge, with the fumes of brandy and tobacco, reassured the visitant. Her stockingless feet were thrust into wadded slippers; over her white night-dress was a dark-blue wrapper, and, in addition to this protection against the cold, she was enveloped in a great shawl, disposed like a cowl about her head. Without rustle or incautious mis-step she gained the side of the improvised bed, and leaned over it. The face of the occupant was turned slightly toward the left shoulder, and away from the light. The apparition raised herself, with a gesture of impatience, caught the candle from the rickety table at the head of the mattress, snuffed it hurriedly, and again stooped toward the recumbent figure, with it in her hand.
It was then that the vigilant watcher unclosed her flabby lids, slowly, and without start or exclamation, much as a dozing cat blinks when a redder sparkle from the fire dazzles her out of dreams. One hard wink, one bewildered stare, and Phillis was awake and wary. Her chin sank yet lower upon her chest, but the black eyes were rolled upward until they bore directly upon the strange tableau. The shawl had dropped from the lady's head, and the candle shone broadly upon her features, as upon the sick man's profile. Apparently dissatisfied with this view, she slipped her disengaged hand under the cheek which was downward, and drew his face around into full sight.
“And bless your soul, honey!” Aunt Phillis told her young mistress, long afterward, “you never see sech a look as was on hern—while her eyes was thar bright and big, they was jist like live coals sot in a lump of dough—she growed so white!”
Nevertheless the spy could return the candle to its place upon the table without perceptible tremor of lip or limb, and after bestowing one scrutinizing glance upon the nurse, who was fast asleep beneath it, she went to the heap of damp clothing. These she lifted—one by one—less gingerly than Phillis had done, and ransacked every likely hiding-place of papers or valuables, going through the operation with a rapid dexterity that astounded the old woman's weak mind, and made her ashamed of her own clumsiness. Anticipating the final stealthy look in her direction, the heavy lids fell once again, and were not raised until the rusty bolt passed gratingly into the socket, and she felt that the place was deserted by all save herself and the dying stroller.
She was in no danger of dozing upon her post after this visitation. For the few hours of darkness that yet remained, she sat in her chair, her elbows upon her knees, smoking, and pondering upon what she had witnessed, varying her occupations by feeding the fire and such care of the patient as she considered advisable; likening, in her rude, yet excitable imagination, the rumbling of the gale in the chimney and across the roof-tree, to the roll of the chariot-wheels which were to carry away the parting soul; the tap and rattle of sleet and wind at the windows to the summons of demons, impatient at Death's delay.
“The Lord send him an easy death, and let him go up, instead of down!” she groaned aloud, once.
But the dubious shake of the head accompanying the benevolent petition betokened her disbelief in the possibility of a favorable reply. In her articles of faith it was only by a miracle that a “no-account white man,” picked up out of the highway, and whose pockets were barren as were those she had examined, could get an impetus in that direction.
The stormy dawn was revealing, with dreary distinctness, the shabby disorder of the lumber-room, when Dr. Ritchie appeared in his dressing-gown, rubbing his eyes, and yawning audibly.
“Gone—hey?” was his comment upon the negress' movements.
She had bound a strip of linen about the lank jaws; combed back the grizzled hair from the forehead into sleek respectability; crossed the hands at the wrists, as only dead hands are ever laid; straightened the limbs, and was in the act of spreading a clean sheet over her finished work.
“Nigh upon an hour since, sir,” she responded, respectfully.
“He did not revive at all after I left him?”
“Not a breath or a motion, sir. He went off at the last jist as easy as a lamb. Never tried to say nothin', nor opened his eyes after you went down. 'Twould a' been a pity ef you had a' lost more sleep a-settin' up with him. Ah, well, poor soul! 'taint for us to say whar he is now. I would hope he is in glory, ef I could. I 'spose the Almighty knows, and that's enough.”
The doctor arrested her hand when she would have covered the face.
“He must have been a fine-looking fellow in his day!” he said, more to himself than to her. “But he has lived fast, burned himself up alive with liquor.”
“I didn't call nobody, sir, to help me, 'cause nobody couldn't do no good, and I was afeared of wakin' the gentlemen and ladies, a trottin' up and downstairs,” continued Phillis, bent upon exculpating herself from all blame in the affair, and mistaking his momentary pensiveness for displeasure.
“You were quite right, old lady! All the doctors and medicines in the world could not have pulled him through after the drink and the snow had had their way with him for so many hours—poor devil! Well! I'll go back to bed now, and finish my morning nap.”
He was at the threshold when he bethought himself of a final injunction.
“You had better keep an eye upon these things, Aunty!” pointing to the coat and other garments she had ranged upon chairs to dry in front of the fire. “There will be a coroner's inquest, I suppose, and there may be papers in his pockets which will tell who he was and where he belonged. When you are through in here, lock the door and take out the key—and if you can help it, don't let a whisper of this get abroad before breakfast. It will spoil the ladies' appetites. If anybody asks how he is, say 'a little better.' He can't be worse off than he was in life, let him be where he may.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Phillis, in meek obedience. “But I don't think he was the kind his folks would care to keep track on, nor the sort that carries valeyble papers 'round with 'em.”
“I reckon you are not far out of the way there!” laughed the doctor, subduedly, lest the echo in the empty hall might reach the sleepers on the second floor, and he ran lightly down the garret steps.
The inquest sat that afternoon. It was a leisure season with planters, and a jury was easily collected by special messengers—twelve jolly neighbors, who were not averse to the prospect of a glass of Mrs. Sutton's famous egg-nogg, and a social smoke around the fire in the great dining-room, even though these were prefaced by ten minutes' solemn discussion over the remains of the nameless wayfarer.
His shirt was marked with some illegible characters, done in faded ink, which four of the jury spelled out as “James Knowlton,” three others made up into “Jonas Lamson,” and the remaining five declined deciphering at all. Upon one sock were the letters “R. M.” upon the fellow, “G. B.” With these unavailable exceptions, there was literally no clue to his name, profession, or residence, to be gathered from his person or apparel. The intelligent jury brought in a unanimous verdict—“Name unknown. Died from the effects of drink and exposure;” the foreman pulled the sheet again over the blank, chalky face, and the shivering dozen wound their way to the warmer regions, where the expected confection awaited them.
Their decorous carousal was at its height, and the ladies, one and all, had sought their respective rooms to recuperate their wearied energies by a loll, if not a siesta, that they might be in trim for the evening's enjoyment (Christmas lasted a whole week at Ridgeley) when four strapping field hands, barefooted, that their tramp might not break the epicurean slumbers, brought down from the desolate upper chamber a rough pine coffin, manufactured and screwed tight by the plantation carpenter, and after halting a minute in the back porch to pull on their boots, took their way across the lawn and fields to the servants' burial-place. This was in a pine grove, two furlongs or more from the garden fence, forming the lower enclosure of the mansion grounds. The intervening dell was knee-deep in drifted snow, the hillside bare in spots, and ridged high in others, where the wind-currents had swirled from base to summit. The passage was a toilsome one, and the stalwart bearers halted several times to shift their light burden before they laid it down upon the mound of mixed snow and red clay at the mouth of the grave. Half-a-dozen others were waiting there to assist in the interment, and at the head of the pit stood a white-headed negro, shaking with palsy and cold—the colored chaplain of the region, who, more out of custom and superstition than a sense of religious responsibility—least of all motives, through respect for the dead—had braved the inclement weather to say a prayer over the wanderer's last home.
The storm had abated at noon, and the snow no longer fell, but there had been no sunshine through all the gloomy day, and the clouds were now mustering thickly again to battle, while the rising gale in the pine-tops was hoarse and wrathful. Far as the eye could reach were untrodden fields of snow; gently-rolling hills, studded with shrubs and tinged in patches by russet bristles of broom-straw; the river swollen into blackness between the white banks, and the dark horizon of forest seeming to uphold the gray firmament. To the right of the spectator, who stood on the eminence occupied by the cemetery, lay Ridgeley, with its environing outhouses, crowning the most ambitious height of the chain, the smoke from its chimneys and those of the village of cabins beating laboriously upward, to be borne down at last by the lowering mass of chilled vapor.
The coffin was deposited in its place with scant show of reverence, and without removing their hats, the bystanders leaned on their spades, and looked to the preacher for the ceremony that was to authorize them to hurry through with their distasteful task. That the gloom of the hour and scene, and the utter forlornness of all the accompaniments of what was meant for Christian burial, had stamped themselves upon the mind and heart of the unlettered slave, was evident from the brief sentences he quavered out—joining his withered hands and raising his bleared eyes toward the threatening heavens:
“Lord! what is man, that thou art mindful of him! For that which befalleth man befalleth beasts—even one thing befalleth them. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Man cometh in with vanity and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. The dead know not anything, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished, neither have they a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.
“Lord! teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Oh, spare ME, that I may recover strength, ere I go hence and be no more!
“In the name of the FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST—dust to dust, and ashes to ashes! Amen!”
“By the way, Mr. Aylett, the poor wretch up-stairs should be buried at the expense of the county,” remarked the coroner, before taking leave of Ridgeley and the egg-nogg bowl. “I will take the poor-house on my way home, and tell the overseer to send a coffin and a cart over in the morning. You don't care to have the corpse in the house longer than necessary, I take it? The sooner he is in the Potter's Field, the more agreeable for you and everybody else.”
Mr. Aylett pointed through the back window at the winding path across the fields.
A short line of black dots was seen coming along it, in the direction of the house. As they neared it they were discovered to be men, each with a hoe or shovel upon his shoulder.
“The deed is done!” said the master, smiling. “My good fellows there have spared the county the expense, and the overseer the trouble of this little matter. As for the Potter's Field, a place in my servants' burying-ground is quite as respectable, and more convenient in this weather.”
The jurors were grouped about the fire in the baronial hall, buttoning up overcoats and splatterdashes, and drawing on their riding-gloves, all having come on horseback. In the midst of the general bepraisement of their host's gentlemanly and liberal conduct, Mrs. Aylett swam down the staircase, resplendent in silver-gray satin, pearl necklace and bracelets, orange flowers and camelias in her hair—semi-bridal attire, that became her as nothing else ever had done.
“My dear madam,” said the foreman of the inquest—a courtly disciple of the old school of manner, and phraseology—as the august body of freeholders parted to either side to leave her a passage-way to the fireplace—“your husband is a happy man, and his wife should be a happy woman in having won the affection of such a model of chivalry”—stating succinctly the late proof the “model” had offered to an admiring world of his chivalric principles.
The delicate hand stole to its resting-place upon her lord's arm, as the lady answered, her ingenuous eyes suffused with the emotion that gave but the more sweetness to her smile.
“I AM a happy woman, Mr. Nelson! I think there is not a prouder or more blessed wife in all the land than I am this evening.”
Laugh, jest, and dance ruled the fleeting hours in the halls of the old country-house that night, and the presiding genius of the revel was still the beautiful hostess—never more beautiful, never so winning before. No one noticed that, by her orders, or her husband's, the window through which she had beheld the goblin visage was closely curtained. Or, this may have been an accidental disposition of the drapery, since no trace of her momentary alarm remained in her countenance or demeanor.
In the kitchen a double allowance of toddy was served out, by their master's orders, to the men who had taken part in the interment on the hill-top. And, in their noisy talk over their potations the vagrant was scarcely mentioned.
Only the pines, hoarser in their sough, by reason of the falling snow that clogged their boughs, chanted a requiem above the rough hillock at their feet.
“Man cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name is covered with darkness!”
“THAT is a new appearance.”
“Who can she be?”
“Unique—is she not?” were queries bandied from one to another of the various parties of guests scattered through the extensive parlors of the most fashionable of Washington hotels, at the entrance of a company of five or six late arrivals. All the persons composing it were well dressed, and had the carriage of people of means and breeding. Beyond this there was nothing noteworthy about any of them, excepting the youngest of the three ladies of what seemed to be a family group. When they stopped for consultation upon their plans for this, their first evening in the capital, directly beneath the central chandelier of the largest drawing-room, she stood, unintentionally, perhaps, upon the outside of the little circle, and not exerting herself to feign interest in the parley, sought amusement in a keen, but polite survey of the assembly, apparently in no wise disconcerted at the volley of glances she encountered in return.
If she were always in the same looks she wore just now, she must have been pretty well inured to batteries of admiration by this date in her sunny life. She was below the medium of woman's stature, round and pliant in form and limbs; in complexion dark as a gypsy but with a clear skin that let the rise and fall of the blood beneath be marked as distinctly as in that of the fairest blonde. Her eyes were brown or black, it was hard to say which, so changeful were their lights and shades; and her other features, however unclassic in mould, if criticised separately, taken as a whole, formed a picture of surpassing fascination. If her eyes and cleft chin meant mischief, her mouth engaged to make amends by smiles and seductive words, more sweet than honey, because their flavor would never clog upon him who tasted thereof. Her attire was striking—it would have been bizarre upon any other lady in the room, but it enhanced the small stranger's beauty. A black robe—India silk or silk grenadine, or some other light and lustrous material—was bespangled with butterflies, gilded, green, and crimson, the many folds of the skirt flowing to the carpet in a train designed to add to apparent height, and, in front, allowing an enchanting glimpse of a tiny slipper, high in the instep, and tapering prettily toward the toe. In her hair were glints of a curiously-wrought chain, wound under and among the bandeaux; on her wrists, plump and dimpled as a baby's, more chain-work of the like precious metal, ending in tinkling fringe that swung, glittering, to and fro, with the restless motion of the elfin hands, she never ceased to clasp and chafe and fret one with the other, while she thus stood and awaited the decision of her companions. But instead of detracting from the charm of her appearance, the seemingly unconscious gesture only heightened it. It was the overflow of the exuberant vitality that throbbed redly in her cheeks, flashed in her eye, and made buoyant her step.
“What an artless sprite it is!” said one old gentleman, who had stared at her from the instant of her entrance, in mute enjoyment, to the great amusement of his more knowing nephews.
“All but the artless!” rejoined one of the sophisticated youngsters. “She is gotten up too well for that. Ten to one she is an experienced stager, who calculates to a nicety the capabilities of every twist of her silky hair and twinkle of an eyelash. Hallo! that IS gushing—nicely done, if it isn't almost equal to the genuine thing, in fact.”
The ambiguous compliment was provoked by a change of scene and a new actor, that opened other optics than his lazy ones to their extremest extent. A gentleman had come in alone and quietly—a tall, manly personage, whose serious countenance had just time to soften into a smile of recognition before the black-robed fairy flew up to him—both hands extended—her face one glad sunbeam of surprise and welcome.
“YOU here!” she exclaimed, in a low, thrilling tone, shedding into his the unclouded rays of her glorious eyes, while one of her hands lingered in his friendly hold. “This is almost too good to be true! When did you come? How long are you going to stay? and what did you come for? Yours is the only familiar physiognomy I have beheld since our arrival, and my eyes were becoming ravenous for a sight of remembered things. Which reminds me”—coloring bewitchingly, with an odd mixture of mirth and chagrin in smile and voice—“that I have been getting up quite a little show on my own account, forgetful of les regles, and I suppose the horrified lookers-on think of les moeurs. May I atone for my inadvertence by presenting you, in good and regular form, to my somewhat shocked, but very respectable, relatives? Did you know that I was in Congress this year—that is, Mr. Mason, my aunt's husband, is an Honorable, and I am here with them?”
The gentleman gave her his arm, and they strolled leisurely in the direction of the party she had deserted so unceremoniously.
“I did not know it, but I am glad to learn that you are to make a long visit to the city. I have business that may detain me here for a week—perhaps a fort-night,” was his answer to the first question she suffered him thus to honor.
Then the introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Mason, their married daughter, Mrs. Cunningham, and her husband, was performed. The Member's wife was a portly, good-natured Virginia matron, whose ruling desire to make all about her comfortable as herself, sometimes led to contretemps that were trying to the subjects of her kindness, and would have been distressing to her, had she ever, by any chance, guessed what she had done.
She opened the social game now, by saying, agreeably: “Your name is not a strange one to us, Mr. Chilton. We have often heard you spoken of in the most affectionate terms by our friends, but not near neighbors, the Ayletts, of Ridgeley,——county. Is it long since you met or heard from them?”
“Some months, madam. I hope they were in their usual health when you last saw them?”
Receiving her affirmative reply with a courteous bow, and the assurance that he was “happy to hear it,” Mr. Chilton turned to Rosa, and engaged her in conversation upon divers popular topics of the day, all of which she was careful should conduct them in the opposite direction from Ridgeley, and his affectionate intimates, the Ayletts. He appreciated and was grateful for her tact and delicacy. Her unaffected pleasure at meeting him had been as pleasant as it was unlooked-for, aware as he was, from Mabel's letter immediately preceding the rapture of their engagement, that Rosa must have been staying with her when it occurred. The slander that had blackened him in the esteem of his betrothed had, he naturally supposed, injured his reputation beyond hope of retrieval with her acquaintances. Rosa, her bosom companion, could not but have heard the whole history, yet met him with undiminished cordiality, as a valued friend. Either the Ayletts had been unnaturally discreet, or the faith of the interesting girl in his integrity was firmer and better worth preserving than he had imagined in the past. Perhaps, too, since he was but mortal man, although one whose heritage in the school of experience had been of the sternest, he was not entirely insensible to the privilege of promenading the long suite of apartments with the prettiest girl of the season hanging upon his arm, and granting her undivided attention to all that he said, indifferent to, or unmindful of, the flattering notice she attracted.
Over and above all these recommendations to his peculiar regard was her association with the happy days of his early love. Not an intonation, not a look of hers, but reminded him of Ridgeley and of Mabel. It was a perilous indulgence—this recurrence to a dream he had vowed to forget, but the temptation had befallen him suddenly, and he surrendered himself to the intoxication.
Yes! she was going to the President's levee that evening, Rosa said. A sort of raree-show—was it not? with the Chief Magistrate for head mountebank. He was worse off in one respect than the poorest cottager in the nation he was commonly reported to govern, inasmuch as he had not the right to invite whom he pleased to his house, and when the mob overran his premises he must treat all with equal affability. She pitied his wife! She would rather, if the choice were offered her, be one of the revolving wax dummies used in shop-windows for showing the latest style of evening costume and hair-dressing—for the dolls had no wits of their own to begin with, and were not expected to say clever things, as the President's consort was, after she had lost hers in the crush of the aforesaid mob, who eyed her freely as an appendage to their chattel, the man they had bought by their votes, and put in the highest seat in the Republic. No! she was not provided with an escort to the White House. She did not know three people in Washington beside her relatives, and, looking forward to creeping into the palatial East Room at her uncle's back, or in the shadow of her cousin's husband, the vision of enjoyment had not been exactly enrapturing—BUT, her companion's proposal to join their party and help elbow the crowd away from her, lent a different coloring to the horizon.
BUT—again—flushing prettily—was he certain that the expedition would not bore him? Doubtless he had had some other engagement in prospect for the evening, before he stumbled over her. He ought to know her well enough not to disguise his real wishes by gallant phrases.
“I have never been otherwise than sincere with you,” Frederic said, honestly; “I had thought of going to the levee alone, as a possible method of whiling away an idle evening. If you will allow me to accompany you thither, I shall be gratified—shall derive actual pleasure from the motley scene. It will not be the only time you and I have studied varieties of physiognomy and character in a mixed assembly. Do you recollect the hops at the Rockbridge Alum Springs?”
“I do,” replied Rosa, laconically and very soberly.
He thought she suppressed a sigh in saying it. She was a warm-hearted little creature with all her vagaries, and he was less inclined to reject her unobtrusive sympathy than if a more sedate or prudent person had proffered it.
It was certain he could not have selected a more entertaining associate for that evening. She amused him in spite of the painful recollections revived by their intercourse. She did not pass unobserved in the dense crowd that packed the lower floor of the White House. Her face, all glee and sparkle, the varied music of her soft Southern tongue, her becoming attire—were, in turn, the subject of eulogistic comment among the most distinguished connoisseurs present. It was not probable that these should all be unheard by her cavalier, or that he should listen to them with profound indifference.
He was astonished, therefore, when she protested that she had had “enough of it,” and proposed that they should extricate themselves from the press and go home. It was contrary to the commonly received tenets of his sex respecting the insatiable nature of feminine vanity, that she should weary so soon of adulation which would have rendered a light head dizzy. Mrs. Mason was not ready to leave the halls of mirth. She had met scores of old friends, and was having a “nice, sociable time” in a corner, while Mrs. Cunningham had “not begun to enjoy herself, looking at the queer people and the superb dresses.”
Of course, they had no objection to their wilful relative doing as she liked, but did not conceal their amazement at her bad taste.
“Take the carriage, dear! You'll find it around out there somewhere,” drawled the easy-tempered aunt. “And let Thomas come back for us. He will be in time an hour from this.”
“Would it be an unpardonable infraction of etiquette if we were to walk home?” questioned Rosa of Mr. Chilton, when they were out of Mr. Mason's hearing. “The night is very mild.”
“But your feet. Are they not too lightly shod for the pavement?”
“I left a pair of thick gaiters in the dressing-room, which I wore in the carriage.”
“Then I will be answerable for the breach of etiquette, should it ever be found out,” was the reply, and Rosa disappeared into the tiring-room to equip herself for the walk.
It was a lovely night for December—moonlighted and bland as October, and neither manifested a disposition to accelerate the saunter into which they had fallen at their first step beyond the portico. Rosa dropped her rattling tone, and began to talk seriously and sensibly of the scene they had left, the flatness of fashionable society after the freshness of novelty had passed from it, and her preference for home life and tried friends.
“Yet I always rate these the more truly after a peep at a different sphere,” she said. “Our Old Virginia country-house is never so dear and fair at any other time as when I return to it after playing at fine lady abroad for a month or six weeks. I used to fret at the monotony of my daily existence; think my simple pleasures tame. I am thankful that I go back to them, as I grow older, as one does to pure, cold water, after drinking strong wine.”
“You are blessed in having this fountain to which you may resort in your heart-drought,” answered Frederic, sadly. “The gods do not often deny the gift of home and domestic affections to woman. It is an exception to a universal rule when a man who has reached thirty without building a nest for himself, has a pleasant shelter spared, or offered to him elsewhere.”
“Yet you would weary, in a week, of the indolent, aimless life led by most of our youthful heirs expectant and apparent,” returned Rosa. “I remember once telling you how I envied you for having work and a career. I was youthful then myself—and foolish as immature.”
“I recollect!” and there was no more talk for several squares.
Rosa was getting alarmed at the thought of her temerity in reverting to this incident in their former intercourse, and meditating the expediency of entering upon an apology, which might, after all, augment, rather than correct the mischief she had done, when Frederic accosted her as if there had been no hiatus in the dialogue.
“I recollect!” he repeated, just as before. “It was upon the back piazza at Ridgeley, after breakfast on that warm September morning, when the air was a silvery haze, and there was no dew upon the roses. I, too, have grown older—I trust, wiser and stronger since I talked so largely of my career—what I hoped to be and to do. When did you see her—Miss Aylett,” abruptly, and with a total change of manner.
“The Rubicon is forded,” thought Rosa, complacently, the while her compassion for him was sincere and strong. “He can never shut his heart inexorably against me after this.”
Aloud, she replied after an instant's hesitation designed to prepare him for what was to follow—“I was with Mabel for several days last May. We have not met since.”
“She is alive—and well?” he asked, anxiously.
An inexplicable something in her manner warned him that all was not right.
“She is—or was, when I last heard news of her; we do not correspond. She does not live at Ridgeley now.”
There she stopped, before adding the apex to the nicely graduated climax.
“Not live with her brother! I do not understand.”
“Have you not heard of her marriage?”
“No!”
He did not reel or tremble, but she felt that the bolt had pierced a vital part, and wisely forbore to offer consolation he could not hear.
But when he would have parted with her at the door of her uncle's parlor, she saw how deadly pale he was, and put her hands into his, beseechingly.
“Come in! I cannot let you go until you have said that you forgive me!”
There were tears in her eyes, and in her coaxing accents, and he yielded to the gentle face that sought to lead him into the room. It was fearful agony that contracted his forehead and lips when he would have spoken reassuringly, and they were drops of genuine commiseration that drenched the girl's cheeks while she listened.
“I have nothing to forgive you! You have been all kindness and consideration—I ought not to have asked questions, but I believed myself when I boasted of my strength. I thought the bitterness of the heart's death had passed. Now, I know I never despaired before! Great Heavens! how I loved that woman! and this is the end!”
He walked to the other side of the room.
Rosa durst not follow him even with her eyes. She sat, her face concealed by her handkerchief, weeping many tears for him—more for herself, until she heard his step close beside her, and he seated himself upon her sofa.
“Rosa! dear friend! my sympathizing little sister! I shall not readily gain my own pardon for having distressed you so sorely. When you can do it with comparative ease to yourself, I want you to tell me one or two things more, and then we will never allude to irreparable bygones again.”
“I am ready!” removing her soaked cambric, and forcing a fluttering smile that might show how composed she was; “don't think of me! I was only grieved for your sake, and sorry because I had unwittingly hurt you. I was in hopes—I imagined—”
“That I had ontlived my disappointment? You said, that same September day, that women hid their green wounds in sewing rooms and oratories. Mine should have been cauterized long ago, by other and harsher means, you think. It seldom bleeds—but tonight, I had not time to ward off the point of the knife and it touched a raw spot. Don't let me frighten you! now that the worst is upon me, I must be calmer presently. You were at Ridgeley, in September, a year since, when she who was then Miss Aylett”—compelling himself to the articulation of the sentence that signified the later change—“received her brother's command to reject me?”
“I was.”
“He would never tell me upon what evil report his prohibition was based. He was more communicative with his sister, I suppose?”
And Rosa, following the example of other women—and men—who vaunt their principles more highly than she did hers, made a frank disclosure of part of the truth and held her tongue as to the rest.
“I couldn't help seeing that something was wrong, for Mabel, who, up to the receipt of her brother's letter and one from you that came by the same mail, had been very cheerful and talkative, suddenly grew more serious and reserved than was her habit at any time; but she told me nothing whatever, never mentioned your name again in my hearing. Mrs. Sutton did hint to me her fear that Mr. Aylett had heard something prejudicial to your character, which had greatly displeased him and shocked Mabel, but even she was unaccountably reticent. Intense as was my anxiety to learn the particulars of the story, and upon what evidence they were induced to believe it, I dared not press my inquiry into what it was plain they intended to guard as a family secret.”
His reply was just what she had foreseen and guarded against.
“It would have been a kind and worthy deed, had you written to warn me of my danger, and advised me to make my defence in person. As it was, I was thrown off roughly and pitilessly—my demand upon the brother for the particulars of the accusation against me—my appeal to the sister—loving and earnest as words could make it—for permission to visit her and learn from her own lips that she trusted or disowned me, were alike disregarded. Mr. Aylett's response was a second letter, more coldly insulting than the first—hers, the return of my last, after she had opened and read it, then the surrender of my gifts, letters, notes, everything that could remind her that we had ever met and loved. Mrs. Sutton, too, my father's old and firm friend, deserted me in my extremity. And she must have been acquainted with the character and extent of the charges preferred against me. I had hoped better things from her, if only because I bear her dead husband's name. Did she never speak in your hearing of writing to me?”
“She did—but said, in the next breath, that it would be useless, since the minds of the others were fully made up. I knew she thought Winston arbitrary, and Mabel credulous; but she was afraid to interfere. As for myself, what could I have told you that you had not already heard? I could only hope that the cloud was not heavy, and would soon blow over. From the hour in which it cast the first shadow upon her, Mabel was estranged from me—the decline of our intimacy commenced. The Ayletts take pride in keeping their own counsel. Winston, who never liked me, and whom I detested, was as confidential with me in this affair as my old playfellow and school-mate. Believe me when I declare that if my intercession could have availed aught with her, I would have run the risk of her displeasure and Winston's anathemas by offering it.”
“I do believe you! Nor need you expatiate to me upon the obduracy of the Aylett pride. Surely, no one living has more reason than I to comprehend how unreasoning and implacable I find it is. I looked for injustice at Winston Aylett's hands. I read him truly in our only private interview. Insolent, vain, despotic—wedded to his dogmas, and intolerant of others' opinion, he disliked me because I refused to play the obedient vassal to his will and requirements; stood upright as one man should in the presence of a brother-mortal, instead of cringing at his lordship's footstool. But he was powerless to do more than annoy me without his sister's co-operation.”
“She stood in great, almost slavish, awe of him,” urged Rosa, in extenuation of Mabel's infidelity.
“Aye!” savagely. “And love was not strong enough to cast out fear! She was justifiable if she hesitated to entrust herself and her happiness to the keeping of one she had known but two months. It was prudent—not false—in her to weigh, to the finest grain, the evidence furnished by her brother to prove my unfitness to be her husband. But having done all this, she should have remembered that I had rights also. It was infamous, cowardly, cruel beyond degree, to cast her vote against me without giving me a chance of self-exculpation. Her hand—not his—struck the dagger into my back!”
Again Rosa's fingers involuntarily (?) stole into his, to recall him to a knowledge of where he was, and there were fresh tears, ready to fall from her gazelle eyes, when his agitation began to subside.
“My poor child!” he said, penitently. “I am behaving like a madman, you like a pitying angel! We will have no more scenes, and you must oblige me by forgetting this one, as fast as may be. From to-night Mabel Aylett is to me as if she had never been. To nobody except yourself have I betrayed the secret of my hurt. After this, when you think of it, believe that it is a hurt no longer.”
Rosa “had out” her fit of crying when he went away, betaking herself to her chamber and locking the door that her aunt might not surprise her while the traces of tears disfigured her cheeks. But she was anything but broken-hearted, and only slightly sore in spirit in the retrospect of what had ensued upon her communication to the discarded lover. He had, indeed, given more evidence of his unconquered passion for Mabel than she had expected. His undisguised pleasure in renewed companionship with herself; his excellent spirits during the greater part of the evening; his unembarrassed reply to her aunt's malapropos observation, and fluent chat upon other themes, had misled her into the hope that the ungenerous and uncivil conduct of the Ayletts had disgusted and alienated him from sister, no less than from brother. It was a disappointment to discover that it cost him a terrible effort to pronounce Mabel's name, while the abrupt intelligence of her marriage had distracted him to incoherent ravings, which had nearly amounted to curses upon the authors of his pain.
“And all for a woman who could bring herself, after being engaged to Frederic Chilton, to marry that dolt of a Dorrance!” she said, indignantly. “I wonder if he would have been consoled or chagrined had I painted the portrait of the man who had superseded him. It is as well that I did not make the experiment. He would be magnanimous enough when he cooled down—which he will do by to-morrow morning—to pity her, and that is next to the last thing I want him to do. Thank goodness! the denouement is over, and the topic an interdicted one from this time forth. Now for the verification or refutation of the saying that a heart is most easily caught in the rebound. There was some jargon we learned at school about the angle of incidence being equal to that of reflection. You see, my dearly beloved self,” nodding with returning sauciness at her image in the mirror before which she was combing her hair, “I undertake this business in the spirit of philosophical investigation.”
She needed to keep her courage up by these and the like whimsical conceits, when the forenoon of the next day passed away without a glimpse of Mr. Chilton. He had not yet left his card for the Masons, nor called to inquire after her health, when the summons sounded to the five o'clock dinner. A horrible apprehension seized and devoured her heart by the time the dessert was brought on, and there were no signs of his appearance. He had, ashamed to meet her after last night's exposure of his weakness, or dreading the power of the reminiscences the sight of her would awaken, left the city without coming to say “Farewell.” That is, she had driven him from her forever!
The room went around with her in a dizzy waltz, as the notion crossed her brain.
“The sight and smell of all these sweets make me sick, Aunt Mary,” she said, rising from the table. “My head aches awfully! May I go to my room and lie down?”
“Try some of this nice lemon-ice, my love!” prescribed the plump matron. “The acid will set you all straight. No? You don't think you are going to have a chill, do you? Father!” nudging her husband who was burying his spoon in a Charlotte Russe, “this dear child doesn't want any dessert. Won't you pilot her through the crowd?”
“Only to the door, uncle! Then come back to your dinner!” Rosa made answer to his disconcerted stare. “I can find my way to my chamber without help.”
She could have done it, had she been in possession of her accustomed faculties. But between the harrowing suspicion that engrossed her mind and the nervous moisture that gathered in her eyes with each step, she mounted a story too high, and did not perceive her blunder until, happening to think that her apartment must lie somewhere in the region she had gained, she consulted the numbers upon the adjacent doors, and saw that she had wandered a hundred rooms out of her way, She stopped short to consider which of the corridors, stretching in gas-lit vistas on either hand, would conduct her soonest to the desired haven, when a gentleman emerging from a chamber close by stepped directly upon her train.