UNQUIET HEARTS.
Two hours later Justin returned. "You will find the company in the library, sir," said Prosperity, with dignity, as he helped him off with his coat.
On passing through the music-room, Justin found Chelda alone there, playing dreamy waltzes with the intention of bringing Mr. Huntington to her side. She had made a mistake in diplomacy, or, rather, had overlooked a homely maxim, that circumstances alter cases. The flashing of brilliant conversational wit in the face of a rival usually brought the clergyman to her side, and anchored him there. This evening she had failed, owing to Derrice, who seemed to have fascinated, for the time, the man whom she considered to be her own property.
As Chelda softly played, she meditated deeply. But for Derrice she would have received a proposal of marriage in the cupola, from the only person in the universe who had ever touched her cold heart.
Derrice went much to the parsonage, she knew that. She had found a congenial spirit in Mrs.Negus, and ever since the day Mr. Huntington had come to French Cross and besought the interest of the ladies there in his former friend, Chelda had found him more difficult to manage, more unreliable and provoking. How strange it was that he clung so steadily to the rags of his religious life! Would she ever be able to detach them from his nervous grasp? She must make new plans. Her first move must be to make a friend of Derrice, and she gave Justin a gracious bow of welcome as he passed her.
He paused on the threshold of the library. This room was more grateful to him than the drawing-room, with its many lights, and its gleam and glitter of gold. Here the tints were more subdued, more sombre, from the dull rich colouring of the tiers of handsomely bound books.
Aurelia and Captain Veevers were deep in a game of draughts in a corner where Chelda had arranged them. Derrice, sitting bolt upright on a carved bench, was earnestly unfolding some tale to the clergyman, while Miss Gastonguay, buried in the deepest shadow of the room, pretended to be absorbed in a book.
"Come here, deacon," she said, crooking her finger at Justin, "sit in that old cathedral chair and talk about that girl. She has settled her affair with me. You have schooled her admirably. I am marked,labelled, and sent to perdition. This is your last visit to this house."
"Unless you repent,—'While the lamp holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return.'"
"Young man, don't jest. Tell me truly, do you believe that I am going to be condemned eternally?"
"Certainly, if you do not believe in the Son of God."
"Just what your wife says,—little witch,—and this is your Christianity, your loving-kindness."
"Pardon me, it is notmyChristianity."
"If there is one thing in the world that I hate more than another it is a Puritan," she said, shaking with a hastily evoked wrath.
"If there is one thing that I admire it is a Puritan," he said, coolly, "of late it is so much the fashion to berate them. Puritan is a synonym for priggishness and general narrow-mindedness. The people are mad. Do they forget the stern stuff to which they owe their country, their liberties, their very existence? Away with this sugared sweetness of, 'No matter what one's faith is as long as one lives properly.' I say, one's faith is one's life."
"You are quite excited," said his hostess, becoming calm herself.
"It always excites me. New England is burnt over with heresies. I long for the day of awakening, for the wave of enthusiasm that will spread over thiscountry and bring back the people to the faith of their forefathers."
"You are a fanatic."
"I wish I were."
"You are also an egotist. If you believe what you say you do, if it was really your firm conviction that my soul was in danger, there would be no getting rid of you. Night and day you would roam around French Cross, calling on me to repent."
"True, true," he said, "I acknowledge it with shame. Were I what I ought to be I would leave my desk to-morrow. Paltry worldly affairs would sink into insignificance. I would start on a holy crusade."
"Whereas you sit quietly here and will go quietly to your bank to-morrow, when if you and your church were carrying out the doctrines you profess you would have all Rossignol beating its breast,—but I am wearying you, let us talk on other subjects."
"First, Miss Gastonguay," he remarked, in a lower voice, "let me add a word that I have often wished to say to you. You do not care for me, and I do not blame you, but let me assure you of my respect and interest in you. You only lack personal religion,—will you not submit your heart to God?"
"No, I will not, Justin Mercer."
His face softened still more. "Once, long ago, when I was a boy, I heard my father's voice in thenight. You know what a saintly man he became,—it was his frequent habit to rise from his bed and pray for the souls of his fellow men. That night I heard the mention of your name. He was praying that you might be saved. Miss Gastonguay, I believe you will."
She put her hand to her head. How many more blows was this young man to inflict on her. "I suppose you know," she said, with a sickly smile, "that I might have been your mother."
He smiled too.
"How long ago it all seems, and yet how recent. It might have been yesterday that slim young Sylvester, in his Sunday coat, and with his best stock about his neck, went with hanging head from this house, and my father, red with rage, stood brandishing his cane at him for daring to aspire to the hand of his daughter; while I, poor fool, looked from a window above and laughed. I had so many lovers that I could afford to surrender one. However, I liked him more than I at the time suspected," she went on with more vigour, "though you must not tell your wife any story about a spoiled love match. I have not married because I have chosen to remain single. Middle age and old age are practical. Youth is a far away dream. I did not suffer much, and your father certainly soon consoled himself with a woman better fitted to be a Puritan's wife than dancing Jane Gastonguay ever was. Don't you think so?" and she peered into his face.
Justin, in his stubborn honesty, would not discuss the matter with her. She had flirted with his father and broken his heart, thereby promoting him to saintship gained through much suffering, and he strongly suspected that she had also broken her own heart, and that her peculiarities were the result of this perversion of her feminine nature. She should have married and become the contented mother of a family.
Miss Gastonguay, as if comprehending his thoughts, changed the subject of conversation. "Has my brother Louis any children beside this one?"
"No."
"Who was this girl's mother?"
"A fair-haired German girl with a beautiful Christian character. She was a school-teacher whom my wife's father met in some boarding-house. I gathered from what he told me, that, having learned after marriage what he really was, she faded away and died, first making him promise to carefully educate her child."
"Did Louis love her?"
"He broke down in telling me about her."
"He always had a long head, had Louis. It looks to me as if he deliberately laid a scheme to have you marry his daughter."
"I think he did."
"And you lent yourself to it?"
"I should most certainly not have done so had she been other than she is."
"You have gained a prize matrimonially."
Justin's face glowed. "I am not a man of easy speech," he said, simply, "but I can speak freely to you, and I know you will be interested in hearing that no opinion you can form of my wife will be too high a one. I wish I could describe to you her gentleness and amiability. Little by little she has undertaken the duties of a wife that I was slow to urge upon her. I wished to keep her a happy girl for a time, but the torture of leaving her father brought on a crisis. She began to ask questions, to examine herself, to study me and my relations to her, and now she has put girlhood far behind her, and is getting a firm grasp of things material and spiritual."
"Religion and love," said Miss Gastonguay, with a sigh, "you have both,—or think you have. You ought to be happy."
"We are," said Justin. Then he was reminded of a duty. He first glanced about the room. Captain Veevers's head was bent over the draught-board. He was beating Aurelia now at every game, for her blue eyes had been wandering distractedly toward the music-room ever since Mr. Huntington had sauntered there.
Derrice was engrossed in a book of old prints, and smiled to herself at quaint gods and goddesses riding on clouds, and surrounded by suites of attendants in mid-air.
"Little idiot," said Miss Gastonguay, wrinkling her brow in Aurelia's direction. "Wears her heart on her sleeve. The women here make a simpleton of that minister just because he has legs as long as stilts and hair as pretty as a wig."
"Miss Gastonguay, will you pardon me if I make a suggestion?"
"You may make it,—I don't promise to act on it."
"You have taken a liking to this man," said Justin, earnestly; "you who rarely entertain ministers of any denomination."
"Ministers,—I detest them all! The same type: men old in the work, or fledglings fresh from the theological seminaries,—strict, narrow-minded, uninteresting, knowing nothing outside their denomination, whatever it happens to be, and yet dripping with conceit. Why, this man can talk. He has travelled, he understands music, books, pictures—"
"But, Miss Gastonguay, you are clever enough to perceive that he is at this time undergoing a severe struggle with himself."
"There is something the matter with him. I don't know what it is. I only see that he goesabout with a red face and sulky eyes. He is really losing his good manners."
"Suppose you were to know that it is a struggle between his good and his bad angel,—mind, I tell this in strict confidence."
"Your confidence shall be respected, but how can I help him? I thought perhaps he was in love with Chelda. She usually has a dozen admirers about."
How blinded she was by her partiality for her niece; and Justin could not enlighten her, could not say, "I have studied your niece. With a cunning born of her infatuation for this man, she is deliberately setting herself to wean him from his allegiance to the Church back to the fleshly pleasures of the world."
"Miss Gastonguay," he said, slowly, "the man, as I understand him, is not thinking of love or marriage. You can imagine such a thing as the conversion of the intellect and not the heart?"
"Easily."
"I must not judge," said Justin, struggling to select only the most fitting words; "but I fear it has been something like this with Mr. Huntington. He was shocked into religion, he was convinced of his own sin and the sin of the world, and he has lifted up his voice to save sinners and with success. But now his religious duties pall upon him. I haveopportunities of studying him intimately, and I fear he is about to break down."
"This is very shocking, but less so when one considers his upbringing. Let him go back to the world. It will only be one more soul to be lost."
"Miss Gastonguay, you are kind-hearted. Don't think it strange of me if I beg that, for a time, you will not exercise your hospitality so freely with respect to him."
"Hoity-toity, am I a frivolous snare to the rising generation? Go to Mrs. Jonah Potts, young man."
"It is not that,—you understand me. Your surroundings remind him of former days. If he is left to his flock for a time he may—"
Miss Gastonguay would give him no promise. "Stop, Justin Mercer, there is your wife closing her book; it is time for you to take her home."
Justin got up, waited until Derrice said good night, and then followed her from the room. Captain Veevers took charge of Aurelia, Mr. Huntington remained leaning on the piano and listening, without speaking, to Chelda, who played interminably.
Derrice was very quiet on their way down the avenue, and Justin at last asked the question, "Did you enjoy yourself, dolly?"
"Oh, yes,—I go out so little now that I appreciate small pleasures,—not that I am unhappy," she added, clinging closer to him. "Oh, no, I like to live quietly.I was thinking of Miss Chelda. She was so sweet, asking if she might come soon and see me, yet I have an impression that she does not like me. She seems to be always watching me."
"She reminded me of a snake as she moved about the room in that spotted gown," said Justin, musingly.
Derrice, at this, laughed so heartily that Aurelia, coming behind with Captain Veevers, begged to know the cause of her mirth.
"Only a ridiculous speech of my husband," she said; "not worth repeating."
Justin paused, in order to allow the others to catch up to them. How strange were the differing mental characteristics in one family. Derrice and Miss Gastonguay were singularly alike in their honest vivacity. Both were incapacitated by their intellectual make-up from understanding the hidden motives of so deep a soul as Chelda's.
Derrice was gazing back at the lighted house. "How delightfully foreign it is!"
Aurelia, too, looked back, but her thought was not of the house, and her thin lips trembled as she murmured, "Yes." Captain Veevers did not speak, but Justin said, decidedly, "I do not like it."
"Why not?" asked his wife, in surprise.
"Because I do not believe in Americans apingforeign architecture. We have our own style, the colonial. Why should we not cultivate that? We are neither Dutch, nor Chinese, nor French. Why should we live in their houses? They do not live in ours."
"I never thought of that," said his wife. "I like the sentiment."
"And educating children abroad," continued Justin, "I think it is a custom fraught with bad results. Boys and girls educated abroad wish to stay abroad, or they come home prating as Chelda Gastonguay used to do of 'perfect Europe,' and 'charming foreign manners.'"
"'If it only came from Paris, darling Paris, lovely Paris,I would buy it,' said Miss Harris,'If it only came from Paris.'"
"'If it only came from Paris, darling Paris, lovely Paris,I would buy it,' said Miss Harris,'If it only came from Paris.'"
"'If it only came from Paris, darling Paris, lovely Paris,I would buy it,' said Miss Harris,'If it only came from Paris.'"
"'If it only came from Paris, darling Paris, lovely Paris,
I would buy it,' said Miss Harris,
'If it only came from Paris.'"
As Derrice chanted the jingle, Aurelia and Captain Veevers laughed and passed by, while Justin continued, "Chelda Gastonguay detests Rossignol. Nothing will hold her here when her aunt dies."
"They have travelled a good deal?"
"Constantly. Miss Chelda was educated abroad. She has always been unhappy here until lately."
"Why does she like it now?"
Justin could not tell her, but Derrice rushed to a satisfactory conclusion. "I believe she likes Mr. Huntington," she exclaimed.
He neither contradicted nor confirmed her assertion, but a sudden relief came over him. In Derrice's friendly liking for the man, might be found an antidote for the subtle influence of her cousin.