"Dear old Lad,—I am here—on the river. Could you come over for a day? I am very anxious to see you."Lansing Harold."
"Dear old Lad,—I am here—on the river. Could you come over for a day? I am very anxious to see you.
"Lansing Harold."
At the last intelligence, Lanse had been in Rome.
There was a scrawled postscript:
"Say nothing, I write only to you."
Winthrop's relations with Margaret since they had parted, on the day of his return, at the drawing-room door, had been of the scantiest; they had scarcely exchanged a word. She avoided him; he said to himself that she had turned into ice; but this was not a truthful comparison, for ice does not look troubled, and Margaret looked both troubled and worn. When he was present she was impassive; but her very impassiveness showed—but what did it show? He could think of no solution that satisfied him any more than he could think of a solution of the mystery of her apparent desire that he should continue to believe of her what he had believed.
And now, to make things more complicated, Lanse had dropped down upon them!
Winthrop made a pretext of another hunting expedition, drove over to the river, and embarked again upon the slow oldHernando, which brought him in due course to the long pier; here, sitting in the United States chair, was Harold.
It was a long time since Winthrop had seen Lanse. He thought him much altered. His figure had grown larger; though he was still but forty-one, none of the outlines of youth were left, there was only an impression of bulk. His thick dark hair was mixed with gray, as also his short beard; and the beard could not conceal the increased breadth of the lower part of the face, the slight lap-over of the cheeks above the collar. His dark eyes, with the yellow lights in them, were dull; his well-cut mouth was a little open, giving him a blank expression, as though he were half asleep.
But when this expression changed, as it did when the silentpostmaster suggested, by a wave of the hand, that his guest should move the government chair a little in order not to be in the way of the passengers who might land, the alteration was so complete, though not a feature stirred, that Winthrop laughed; Lanse serenely stared at the 'coon-skin-hatted man as though he did not exist; his gaze restored perfectly, for himself at least, the space of light and air which that public servant was mistakenly filling.
All this Winthrop witnessed from the deck, as theHernandowas slowly swinging her broad careening side towards the pier. Lanse had not recognized his figure among the motley crowd of voyagers collected at the railing; it was not until the ropes had been made fast by the postmaster (who was also wharf-master, showing much activity in that avocation), and the plank put out, that the lessening crowd brought Winthrop's figure more into relief. He waved his hand again to Lanse; and then Lanse, springing up, responded, and all the old look came back; the dulness vanished, the heaviness became subordinate to the brightening eyes and the smile, he waved his hand in return. They met with gladness; Lanse seemed delighted to see his cousin, and Winthrop had never forgotten his old affection for the big, good-natured, handsome lad of his boyhood days.
The pier was soon left to them; every one else departed, and the two men, strolling up and down, talked together.
At length Lanse said: "Well, I'm glad Margaret's as you describe" (but Winthrop had not described her); "for I might as well tell you at once what I'm down here for—I want her to come back."
"Come back?"
"Yes. I have her promise to come; but women are so insufferably changeable."
"She isn't."
"Isn't she? So much the better for me, then; for she knew the worst of me when she made that promise, and if by a miracle shehasremained in the same mind, my road will be easy."
"I don't mean to push myself into your confidence, Lanse," said Winthrop, after a moment's silence; "but I think I will say here that I have always as strongly as possibledisapproved of her course in leaving you." He made himself say this. It was true, and say it he would.
Lanse laughed, and turned down the brim of his soft hat to keep the sun from his eyes. "I'm not going to lie about it," he answered. "I would have told you at any time if you had asked me; she couldn't help leaving me."
Winthrop stared.
"It's a funny world," Lanse went on. "Come along up and get something to eat; then we'll go off in the canoe, and I'll tell you the whole story; you've got to hear it if you're to help."
An hour later the two men were floating away from the pier in a small boat built upon the model of the Indian's birch-bark canoe. Lanse, an expert in this as in almost all kinds of out-door exercise, wielded the paddle with ease, while Winthrop faced him, reclining in the bottom of the boat; it could only hold two. Lightly it sped out towards deep water, the slightest motion sent it forward; its sides were of such slender thickness that the two men could feel the breathing of the great soft stream, which had here a breadth of three miles, though in sight, both above and below, it widened into six. These broad water stretches were tranquil; from shore to shore the slow, full current swept majestically on; and even to look across the wide, still reaches, with the tropical forests standing thickly on their low strands, was a vision of peace for the most troubled human soul.
Kildee plover flew chattering before the canoe while they were still near land. Far above in the blue a bald-headed eagle sailed along. Lanse chose to go out to the centre of the stream—Lanse never skirted the edge of anything; reaching it, he turned southward, and they voyaged onward for nearly an hour.
He did not appear disposed to begin his narrative immediately; and Winthrop asked no questions. Every now and then each indulged in a retrospective remark; but these remarks concerned themselves only with the days of their boyhood, they brought up the old jokes, and called each other by the old names. Winthrop, after a while, branching off a little, suggested that this warm brown tide, winding softly through the beautiful low green country, was something toremember—on a January day, say, in a manufacturing town at the North, when a raw wind was sweeping the streets, when the horse-cars were bumping along between miniature hills of muddy ice, when all complexions were dubious and harassed, and the constantly dropping flakes of soot from myriad chimneys failed to convey a suggestion of warmth, but rather brought up (to the initiated) a picture of chill half-heated bedrooms, where these same harassed complexions must undergo more torture from soap and water in the effort to remove the close-clinging marks of the "black snow."
"Oh, confound your manufacturing town!" Lanse answered.
"I can't; I'm a manufacturer myself," was Winthrop's response.
At length Lanse turned the canoe towards the western shore. A creek emptied into the river at this point, a creek which had about the breadth of the Thames at Westminster; Lanse entered the creek. Great ragged nests of the fish-hawks crowned many of the trees here, making them resemble a group of light-houses at the creek's mouth. They met an old negro on a raft, who held up a rattlesnake which he seemed to think they would admire. "Fibe foot en eight inch, boss, en ferteen rattles."
"That's African Joe," said Lanse. "I've already made his acquaintance; he was born in Africa.—You old murderer, what do you want for showing us that poor reptile you have put an end to?"
Old Joe, a marvel of negro old age, grinned as Lanse tossed him a quarter. "'Gater, massa," he said, pointing.
It was a black lump like the end of a floating log,—an alligator submerged all but that inch or two of head.
"That's the place I'm looking for, I think," said Lanse; "I was up here yesterday."
And with two or three strong strokes of the paddle he sent the canoe round a cape of lily-pads, into the mouth of a smaller creek which here came, almost unobserved, into the larger one. It was a stream narrow but deep, which took them into the forest. Here they floated over reflections so perfect of the trees draped in silver moss on shore that it was hard to tell where reality ended and the picture began.Great turtles swam along down below, water-moccasins slipped noiselessly into the amber depths from the roots of the trees as the canoe drew near; alligators began to show themselves more freely; the boat floated noiselessly over one huge fellow fifteen feet long.
Lanse was aroused. "I tell you, old lad, this isn't bad," he said.
"I don't care about it," Winthrop answered; "it's sensational."
Over this remark Lanse indulged in a retrospective grin. "Old!" he said. "You've been getting that off ever since you were twenty. Who was it that called Niagara 'violent?' The joke is that, at heart, you yourself are the most violent creature I know."
"Oh—talk about hearts!" said Winthrop.
The trees now began to meet overhead; when their branches interlaced so that the shade was complete, Lanse tied the boat-rope to a bough, stretched himself out in his end of the boat, lit a cigarette, and looked at his companion. "Now for the story," he said. "I tell you because I want your help; I am sure that Margaret has the highest opinion of you."
"She has none at all. She detests me."
"No!" said Lanse, using the word as an exclamation. "How comes that? You must have been very savage to her?"
"I have always been against her about you."
"Has Aunt Katrina been savage too?"
"She has given her a home, at any rate."
"And a pretty one it must have been, if she has looked, while about it, as you look now," Lanse commented.
"Never mind my looks. I don't know that your own are any better. What have you to say?"
"One thing more, first. How much has Margaret told?"
"Nothing. That is, nothing to me."
"I meant Aunt K."
"How should I know?" said Winthrop, shortly. Then he made himself speak with more truth. "Aunt Katrina complains that Margaret has never said a word."
"Yet you've all been disapproving of her all this time!Now I call that a specimen of the fixed injustice so common among nice people," said Lanse, musingly. He was sorry for the nice people.
"Before you criticise, let us see how wellyouhave behaved," suggested his companion.
"Oh,Idon't pretend to be a well-regulated character. Let me see—I shall have to go back to the beginning to make you understand. I don't know whether you know how Margaret was brought up? She had always lived in the country; not a village—the old Cruger place was three miles from everywhere; there she lived with her grandmother and her grandmother's friends, not a young person among them; she hadn't even been to school—always a governess at home. She was only seventeen when I first saw her; we were there in the house together—Aunt Katrina's—and I was at the time more in the dumps than I had ever been in my life. I had just come back from abroad, as you know; and the reason I had come back, which you don't know, was because some one (never mind who—not an American) had gone off and married under my nose a man with a million—several of them if you count in French. As I had expected to marry her myself, you may imagine whether I enjoyed it. Feeling pretty well cut up, smarting tremendously, if I must confess it, it seemed to me, after a while, that it wouldn't be a bad idea to marry Margaret Cruger. I couldn't feel worse than I did, and maybe I might feel better, she was very sweet in her way; I don't pretend that I was ever in love with her, but I liked her from the first. I have always had a fancy for young girls," pursued Lanse, taking off his hat and putting it behind his head as a pillow; "when they're not forward (American girls are apt to be forward, though without in the least knowing it), they're enchanting. The trouble is that they can't stay young forever; they don't know anything, and of course they have to learn, andthatprocess is tiresome; it would be paradise if a girl of seventeen could sit down like a woman of thirty, and paradise isn't intended, I suppose, to come just yet."
"Don't talk your French to me," said Winthrop; "I don't admire it."
"That's another of your shams. Yes, you do. But it's perfectly true that a young girl can no more sit down with grace than she can listen with grace."
"Yes; you want to talk."
"On the contrary, I don't want to, I want to be silent; but I want them to know how to listen to my silence. Well, I won't go into the details. She was so young—Margaret—that I easily made her believe that I couldn't live without her, that I should go to the bad direct unless she would take charge of me—a thing that is apt to succeed with young girls when they're conscientious (as Margaret was), unless they happen to care for some one else; Margaret didn't care for any one else, and so she was caught. We were married; and I give you my word I fully intended to treat her as well as I knew how. But—ill luck got mixed with it."
Here Lanse changed his position again, and clasping his hands under his head, gazed up at the dense green above. "Let's hope a moccasin won't take a walk out on one of those branches and fall down; they do it sometimes, I know. We had not been married long, Margaret and I, when the other one wrote to me."
"Nice sort of person."
"Precisely. But I cared more about her than I did about any one in the world, and that makes a difference. I thought she wrote to me because she couldn't help it—in short, because she cared so much for me. That's taking. And now here's where ill luck took a hand. Did I intend to let any of this in the least touch Margaret—interfere withher? As far as possible from it; my intention was that she should never know or dream of it, it was all to be kept religiously from her. Why—I wouldn't have had her know it for anything, first on her own account, then on mine; the wife of Lansing Harold," went on Lanse, smiling a little at himself, yet evidently meaning exactly what he said, "must be above suspicion, by which I intend the verb, not the noun; up to thirty, she must be too innocent to suspect. But what do you suppose came next? By the most extraordinary chance in the world Margaret herself got hold of one of my letters to—to the other person. She came upon the loose sheets by accident, and thought it was something that I must have been writing some time to her; she never imagined that it wasto any one else, or she wouldn't have read it, she was punctiliousness itself in such matters; but her eyes happened to fall first upon the middle sheet, where there was no name, and the—'the language,' as she afterwards expressed it, made her believe that it was addressed to herself; a man could only write in that way to his wife, she supposed. But at the end she was undeceived, for there she found the other name. Of course we had a scene when I came home. I was horribly annoyed by what had happened, but I did my best to be nice to her. I told her that it was a miserable accident in every way, her coming upon that letter, that I could never forgive myself for having left it where I did; I told her that I could perfectly understand that it had been a great shock to her—a shock that I was more sorry for than she could possibly be. But as it had happened, we must both make the best of it, and her 'best' was simply to forget all about it as soon as she could,—it was wonderful how much one could forget if one tried; I could assure her that nothing should ever touch her position as my wife, there should be no breath upon that; always I should give her in the eyes of all the world the first honor, the first place. You see, it was the best I could do. I couldn't deny the letter; it was in my own handwriting, it even had a date; and it wasn't a letter, either, that you could explain away. But I couldn't do anything with her. I don't mean that she argued or combated, she seemed all broken to pieces; she sat there looking at me with a sort of wonder and horror combined. Before night she was ill—a fever. She was ill three weeks, and I was as nice to her all that time as I possibly could be, I brought her lovely flowers every day. As she grew better, I hoped we were going to go on in peace; certainly the last thing I wanted was a quarrel with her. But—women are bound to be fools! no sooner was she able to sit up than she took the first chance to ask me (there had been a nurse about before) whether I had abandoned that dreadful affair. I suppose I could have lied to her, if I was going to do it, that was the time. But, as it happens, I don't lie, it has never been one of my accomplishments. So I told her that she ought to treat such things as a lady should,—that is, not descend to them; and I told her furthermore that she ought to treat this one asmy wifeshould. When I said that, I remember she looked at me as if she were in a sort of stupor; you see, tohersense, shewastreating it as my wife should," commented Lanse, telling his own story, as he felt himself, with much impersonal fairness. "All this time, of course, I had had to postpone everything; she continued to improve, and I took the ground of saying nothing. When another month had passed, and she was perfectly well again, I mentioned one day, carelessly, and before some one else, that I thought I should try a little summer trip of thirty days or so across the ocean and back; I shouldn't take her, because she wasn't as fond of the sea as I was, and twenty of the thirty days would be spent afloat; she would be much more comfortable at home—we had taken a pretty house at New Rochelle for the year. She didn't make any especial comment then, but as soon as she could get me alone I saw that it had all been of no use—my patience and my waiting; she was determined to talk. Her point was that I must not go. I am not very yielding, as you know; but she was even more obstinate than I was; it was owing to the ideas she had about such things, she wasn't a Roman Catholic, but she thought marriage a sacrament—almost. I got in a few words on that side myself, I told her that she seemed to have a singular idea of a wife's duties; one of them was generally supposed to be to guard her husband's name, which was also her own; but, that whileIwished to occasion no talk, no scandal, she was doing her very best to stir up both by having an open quarrel with me. And then I asked her what she proposed to do? I suppose I looked ugly. She got up and stood there, holding on to the back of a chair; 'I must go with you,' she said. 'I can't take you,' I told her. And then she said that she couldfollowme. That, I confess, put me in a rage, I was never angrier in my life. I imagined her appearing upon the scene there in Paris! A pretty spectacle I should be, followed about and tracked down by a wife of that age—a wife, too, who was acting solely from a sense of duty; with her school-girl face, that was a combination rather too ridiculous for any man to stand. To cut the story short, I left her then and there. That night I slept at a hotel, and the next day I sailed; I had changed my plan of travel, in order that sheshould not know for some time where I was; but I think I frightened her sufficiently about following me before I left her. I not only expressly forbade it, but I told her that she wouldn't be received in case she should try it; there would be standing orders to that effect left with the servants. I should never touch any more of her money, I told her (I never have to this day); she could set going any story she pleased about me, and I wouldn't contradict it; that would leave her very easy; on my side I should simply say nothing, and I should cause no scandal, she might be sure of that So I went off. On the other side I found a letter from her—she didn't know my address, but she had sent it to my lawyer; I've brought that letter along for you to see, it will give you a better idea of her, as she was at the time, than any of my descriptions." And he took from his pocket-book an old envelope, and tossed it across.
Winthrop opened the envelope; it contained a small sheet of paper, upon which, in a youthful immature handwriting, these words were written:
"My Dear Lanse,—I have stayed here by myself all day. And I have been very unhappy. I have not let anybody know that you were gone."I feel as though I must have done wrong, and yet I don't know how."Perhaps you will come back. I shall hope that you will. I will wait here for your answer."I will come to you at any time if—you know what. And I hope you will soon send for me."Your affectionate wife,"Margaret."
"My Dear Lanse,—I have stayed here by myself all day. And I have been very unhappy. I have not let anybody know that you were gone.
"I feel as though I must have done wrong, and yet I don't know how.
"Perhaps you will come back. I shall hope that you will. I will wait here for your answer.
"I will come to you at any time if—you know what. And I hope you will soon send for me.
"Your affectionate wife,"Margaret."
"You see there's no trace of jealousy," Lanse commented, in his generalizing way; "she wasn't jealous, because she wasn't in love with me—never had been. Of course shethoughtshe loved me—she never would have married me otherwise; but the truth was that at that time she had no more conception of what real love is than a little snow image: that was one of the reasons why I had first liked her. I've no doubt shewashorribly miserable when shewrote that letter, as she says she was. But there was no love in her misery, it was all duty; I grant you that with her that was a tremendously strong feeling. Well, I answered her letter, I told her she had better go and live with Aunt Katrina as before, that that was the best place for her. I told her that I should stay where I was for the present, and on no account was she to try to follow me; that was the one thing I would not endure; I had to frighten her about that, because she had so much obstinacy—steadfastness if you like—that if I had not done so, and effectually, she would certainly have started in pursuit—prayer-book in hand, poor child! She wrote to me once more, repeating her offer to come whenever I should wish it; but I didn't wish it then, and didn't answer. Eight years have passed, and I haven't answered yet. But now I think I shall try it."
Winthrop had sat gazing at the little sheet, with the faded girlish handwriting. Hot feelings were surging within him, he felt that he must take a firm hold of himself; this made his manner calm. "What do you want of her?" he said. "Aunt Katrina couldn't get on a day without her."
"Aunt Katrina would give her up to me," said Lanse, securely. (And Winthrop knew that this was true.) "What do I want of her? I want to have a home of my own again, a place where I can be comfortable; I want to have a place where I can keep all my shoes. I am not as young as I once was; I don't mind tellingyouthat I've had one or two pretty serious attacks—rheumatism threatening the heart. It's time to be old, to take in sail; I'm a reformed character, and I don't see why Margaret shouldn't come and carry on the good work—especially as she has promised. The one danger is that she may have begun to—But I hardly think that."
"That she may have begun to hate you?" said Winthrop. "Yes, I should think that highly probable." He still held the poor little letter, the childlike, bewildered appeal of the deserted young wife.
"No, I didn't mean that," Lanse answered; "I meant that she might have begun to care for some one else; really care, you know. But I don't believe it. If it were only that she had begun to hate me, that would be nothing; she wouldthink it very wrong to hate me (though she might not be able to help it), and that would make her come back to me all the quicker."
Winthrop looked at him from under his tilted hat—he had tilted it forward over his eyes. "I should think it would make you sick to ask her," he said—"sick with shame!"
"It isn't the least shameful, it's the right thing to do," responded Lanse. "But which side are you on, Ev? You seem to be all over the field."
"Never mind which side I'm on. You can't take her up and drop her in that way."
"You've got it mixed. I dropped her eight years ago;nowI'm taking her up again. And if she is as I think she is, she will be glad to come."
"Oh!" said Winthrop, with angry scorn.
"She'll be glad, because she's my wife—she's a stickler for that sort of thing. She is a very good woman; that's the advantage of having a really good woman for your wife—you can rely upon her whether she likes you or not—likes you very much, I mean. But I begin to think you don't know her as well as I do, in spite of the time you have had."
"Know her? I don't know her in the least! I have never known her—I see that now."
At this moment they heard the dip of an oar, and stopped. Coming down the narrow stream behind them, appeared a rude craft manned by a very black boy and a very white baby. The boat was a long, rough dug-out, and the boy was paddling; his passenger, a plump child of about three, had the bleached skin of the Florida cracker, and flaxen hair of the palest straw-color. An immense calico sun-bonnet lay across its knee, and, after a slow stare with twisted neck at the two strangers, it lifted and put on this penthouse; to put it on was probably its idea of "manners." The penthouse, in fact, represented the principal part of its attire, there was nothing else but a little red petticoat.
But if the passenger was dignified, the oarsman was not; delighted to see anybody, the little darky had showed his white teeth in a perpetual grin from the moment the canoe had appeared in sight.
Lanse always noticed children. "Where have you been, Epaminondas?" he said, with pretended severity. "What are you doing here?"
Epaminondas, at the first suggestion of conversation, had stopped paddling. He accepted with cheerfulness the improvised name. "Ben atter turkles, boss. But I 'ain't fin' none."
"What is the name of that young lady you have with you?"
"Gin," answered Epaminondas, with an even more extensive smile than before.
"The whole of it, I mean; I know there's more."
"Trufe, boss, der sholy is," responded Epaminondas, impressed by this omniscience. "Gin's wat dey calls her mosely; but Victoryne John Mungumry Gin—dat's de hull ob it. Victoryne en John Mungumry is folks wat her ma knew whar she come fum, up in Alabawm, en she wanted to membunce 'em someways, so she called Gin atter 'em. En Gin—dat'sVirginny—wuz de name ob her daddy's folks, dey tole me."
"I am surprised that her family should allow Miss Montgomery to be out without her nurse," Lanse went on.
"She 'ain't got no nuss," Epaminondas answered. "EnIhev to tote her mos' er der time, en she's hebby—she am dat! En soter-dayI 'lowed I'd rudder take her in de boat a wiles." He looked anxiously at Lanse as he made this explanation; he was a thin little fellow of about ten, and Miss Montgomery was decidedly solid.
"I'm inclined to think, my man, that you're out without leave; I advise you to go home as fast as you can. And mind you keep the boat straight."
"Yas, boss," answered Epaminondas, glad to escape, and plying his paddle again.
He gave a "Ki!" of delight as a silver coin fell at his feet. "Don't stop to pick it up now," said Lanse. "Go on with Miss Montgomery; restore her to her parents as soon as possible."
Epaminondas bent to his oar; the two men looked after him as the boat went on its way towards the outer creek.
Suddenly, "Good God!" cried Lanse, springing to his feet.
He had to unloose the rope; but he did that in an instant, and, seizing the paddle, he sent the canoe flying down-stream after the dug-out.
Epaminondas, toiling at his oar, had not gone thirty feet when Lanse had seen a large moccasin drop from a branch above directly into the long narrow boat as it passed beneath; the creature fell midway between the children, who occupied the two ends.
Quick as a flash the little negro had jumped overboard. But that was instinct; he would not desert the white child, and swam on, holding by the boat's side and screaming shrilly.
Meanwhile Miss Montgomery sat composedly in her place; she did not appear at all disturbed.
Winthrop had no oar, so he could not help. Lanse, standing up, forced the canoe through the water rapidly; but before he could bring it up where he could seize the child, the little darky, who had not ceased to swim round and round the drifting craft, announced with a yell, as his curly black head peered for one instant over the side, that the snake was coiling for a spring.
Then Lanse gave a mighty plunge into the stream, and, keeping himself up with one hand, snatched the girl and dragged her overboard by main force with the other, handing her in safety to Winthrop, who had taken the paddle and kept the canoe along. Lanse and the little darky then swam ashore, and stepped into the canoe again from the roots of a large tree, which served them for a landing.
They were both wet through, of course. But Epaminondas was amphibious, his single garment, a pair of trousers, could be as well dried upon his small person as upon a bush. With Lanse it was different. But at present Lanse was excited, nothing would do but to go after that snake which was now luxuriously voyaging down the stream in a boat of its own; taking the paddle, he sent the canoe in chase.
Standing up as he drew near, he announced that the moccasin was motionless in the bottom of the dug-out.
His next announcement was that it was "rather a pretty fellow."
Then, still standing up and gazing, "Ican't kill the poorcreature," he said; "I don't suppose he meant any harm when he dropped—had no idea there was a boat there." Sending the canoe towards the land again, he went ashore and found, after some search, a long branch; with this he paddled back, and then, brandishing it at arm's-length, he tilted the dug-out, by its aid, so far over on one side, that the moccasin, perceiving that the element he preferred was conveniently near, with silent swiftness joined it. Through all this scene, Miss Montgomery, plump and dry—Lanse had held her above the water—remained serenely indifferent; she sat in her sun-bonnet on Winthrop's knee, and preserved her dignity unbroken.
"Shucks!" said Epaminondas (now that the enemy had departed), expectorating, with an air of experience, into the stream; "I is seed 'em twicet ez bigger lots er times!"
Lanse, resuming his seat, wiped his forehead. His leap had been a strong exertion, and already his face showed the fatigue; he was a heavy man, and out of practice in such gymnastics.
"Have you any more notions to carry out?" inquired Winthrop. "I've been spinning back and forth in this boat about as long as I care for."
"Come, now, wasn't that a good deed?" asked Lanse (Lanse always wanted praise). "I call it brutal to kill a poor creature simply because he's got no legs."
"You didn't happen to have your revolver with you, I suppose," Winthrop answered, refusing to bestow the applause.
"Never carried one in my life; cowardly things!" responded Lanse, in a disgusted tone. He was hard at work paddling, in order to keep off a chill.
Epaminondas was put ashore at his own landing on the outer creek, and departed up a sandy path, leading Miss Montgomery, his pockets unwontedly heavy with coin. He looked back as long as he could see them, throwing up and waving his ragged straw hat.
But Miss Montgomery never turned; she plodded steadily homeward on her fat white legs—all of her that could be seen below the sun-bonnet.
Lanse's efforts to avoid a chill were apparently successfulthat night. But the next morning he sent for Winthrop at an early hour. Winthrop found him with a strange pallor on his face, he said he was in great pain. A physician staying in the house was summoned; it was the rheumatism Lanse had spoken of; but this time it did not merely threaten the heart, it had attacked it.
For twelve hours there was danger. Then there was a lull. The lull was followed by something which had the appearance of a partial paralysis of the lower limbs. Lanse's head was now clear, but he was helpless. The physician said that he could not be moved at present; in two weeks or so he should be better able to name a day for that.
To Winthrop, in confidence, he said that in two weeks or so he should be better able to tell whether there was a chance that the present benumbed condition would wear off; itmightbe that Lanse would never be able to sit erect again.
"A pretty fix, isn't it?" Lanse said, on the morning of the second day, as, opening his eyes, he found himself alone with his cousin. "Apparently I'm in for it this time; not going to die, but laid up with a vengeance. Well, the ship's fast in port at last. I supposenowyou've no objection to bringing Margaret over—provided, of course, she will come?"
Great was Katrina Rutherford's joy and triumph when she heard that her "boy," her Lanse, was so near her; "only over on the river, a short day's journey from here." She had "always known" that he would come, and now it was proved that she had been right; shehopedthey appreciated it (Her "they" meant Winthrop and Margaret.) Spare Margaret? Of course she could spare her. Margaret's place was with her husband; and especially now was it her place if he were not well (Aunt Katrina had not been told how ill Lanse was). It was a great mistake, besides, to suppose that Margaret was so necessary to her; Margaret was not in the least necessary, that was one of their fancies; Celestine was much more useful; Looth too. But the point now was, not to talk about who was useful, the point was to have Margaretgo; what was she waiting for, Aunt Katrina would like to be informed.
Winthrop, upon reaching East Angels, had asked for Margaret.
"I want to speak to you," he said; "it won't take long, but we mustn't be interrupted. Any empty room will do."
His manner had changed; he did not wait for her answer, but led the way himself across the hall to the "boudoir" of the Old Madam, now never used; nothing had been altered there since the Old Madam's departure, even Mrs. Thorne, with her persistent desire to make everything serve some present use, had left this room untouched.
Winthrop closed the door, they stood there among the Old Madam's stiff chairs; everything was covered with embroidery, her own work; there was a fierce-looking portrait of her on the wall.
"Lanse is here," said Winthrop; "I mean over on the river. He is ill. He wants you to come to him."
At his first words Margaret had given a great start. For a moment she did not speak. Then she stammered, "Did you say—did you say he was ill?" She spoke almost inaudibly.
"It's something like paralysis. I don't know whether it's really that; but at any rate he's helpless."
"Has he asked for me?"
"He has sent me to bring you."
"Did he give you a letter—a note?"
"No; he told me to bring you."
"Are yousurehe told you that?"
"Good heavens! if I werenotsure I should be a great deal better off. Why do you keep asking me? Isn't it bad enough for me to have to say it at all? But heisill, and that makes everything different. I couldn't have stood it otherwise."
"Stood—"
"Stood your going to him."
"I must go to him if he is ill."
"Ill—yes; that's the only thing that—" He stopped, and stood looking at her.
"I am afraid he is very ill."
"Yes, he is very ill. But I'm not thinking about Lanse now. I know everything, Margaret—everything except why you have wished, why you have been determined, that I should think of you in the way I have,—that is, with suchoutrageous, such cruel wrong. Lanse has told me the whole story of his leaving you,notyour leaving him. And before that, Garda had told me what really happened that afternoon in the woods. Why have you treated me in this way! Why?"
Margaret, whiter than he had ever seen her, stood before him, her hands tightly clasped. She looked like a person strained up to receive a blow.
"If you could only know how I feel when I think what you have been through, and what the truth really was," Winthrop went on; "when I remember my own stupidity, and dense obstinacy, all those years. I can never atone for that, Margaret; never."
Lanse's wife put out her hand, like a person who feels her way, as she went towards the door. "Don't stop me," she said; "I cannot talk now."
Her voice was so strained and husky that he hardly knew it.
She went hastily out.
Lansing Harold was unable to move from his bed, or in his bed, for a number of weeks. During much of this time, also, he suffered from severe pain.
Dr. Kirby assured Aunt Katrina that the pain was a favorable symptom; it indicated that there was no torpor; and with time, patience, and self-denial, therefore, there would be hope of a cure.
"Lanse isn't patient," Aunt Katrina admitted. "But I have always thought him extremely self-denying; see how he has allowed Margaret, for instance, to do as she pleased." For Aunt Katrina now regarded the Doctor as an intimate personal friend.
The Doctor went over to see Lanse three times a week, Winthrop's horses taking him to the river and bringing him back. On the other days the case was intrusted to the supervision of the local practitioner, or rather to his super-audition,for as Lanse, after the first interview, refused to see him again (he called him a water-wagtail), Margaret was obliged to describe as well as she could to the baffled man the symptoms and general condition of his patient—a patient who was as impatient as possible with every one, including herself.
But save for this small duty, Margaret had none of the responsibilities of a nurse; two men were in attendance. She had sent to Savannah for them, Lanse having declared that he infinitely preferred having men about him—"I can swear at them, you know, when the pain nips me. I can't swear at you yet—you're too much of a stranger." This he brought out in the scowling banter which he had used when speaking to her ever since her arrival. The scowl, however, came from his pain.
He was able to move only his head; in addition to the suffering, the confinement was intolerably irksome to a man of his active habits and fondness for out-door life. Under the course of treatment prescribed by Dr. Kirby he began to improve; but the improvement was slow, and he made it slower by his unwillingness to submit to rules. At the end of two months, however, he was able to use his hands and arms again, they could raise him to a sitting position; the attacks of pain came less frequently, and when they did come it was at night. This gave him his days, and one of the first uses he made of his new liberty was to have himself carried in an improvised litter borne by negroes, who relieved each other at intervals, to a house which he had talked about, when able to talk, ever since he was stricken down. This house was not in itself an attractive abode. But Lanse violently disliked being in a hotel; he had noticed the place before his illness, and thinking of it as he lay upon his bed, he kept declaring angrily that at least he should not feel "hived in" there. The building, bare and solitary, stood upon a narrow point which jutted sharply into the river, so that its windows commanded as uninterrupted a view up and down stream as that enjoyed by the little post-office at the end of the pier; it had the look of a signal-station.
It had not always been so exposed. Once it was an emboweredFlorida residence, shaded by many trees, clothed in flowering vines.
But its fate was to be purchased at the close of the war by a northerner, who, upon taking possession, had immediately stripped the old mansion of all its blossoming greenery, had cut down the stately trees which stood near, had put in a dozen new windows, and had then painted the whole structure a brilliant, importunate white. This process he called "making it wholesome."
This northerner, not having succeeded in teaching the southern soil how to improve itself, had returned to the more intelligent lands of colder climates; he was obliged to leave his house behind him, and he contemplated with hope the possibility of renting it "for a water-cure." Why a water-cure no one but himself knew. He was a man haunted by visions of water-cures.
Lansing Harold had no intention of trying hydropathy, unless the wide view of the river from all his windows could be called that. But he said that if he were there, at least he should not feel "jostled."
Jostled he certainly was not, he and his two attendants, Margaret and the colored servants she had with some difficulty obtained, had much more the air of Robinson Crusoes and Fridays on their island; for the hotel, which was the nearest house, was five miles distant, and not in sight, and the river was so broad that only an occasional smoke told that there were abodes of men opposite on the low hazy shore.
Once established in his new quarters, Lanse advanced rapidly towards a more endurable stage of existence. He was still unable to move his legs; but he could now bear being lifted into a canoe, and, once in, with a cushion behind him, he could paddle himself over the smooth water with almost as much ease as ever. He sent for a canoe which was just large enough to hold him; boat and occupant seemed like one person, so perfectly did the small craft obey the motion of his oar. One of his men was always supposed to accompany him; the two boats generally started together from the little home pier; but Lanse soon invented a way of ordering his follower to "wait" for him at this point or that, whilehe took "a run" up some creek that looked inviting. The "run" usually proved the main expedition of the day, and the "waiting" would be perhaps five hours long,—the two attendants could not complain of overwork; they soon learned, however, to go to sleep comfortably in the bottom of the boat. Oftenest of all, Lanse and his canoe went up the Juana; the Jana came from the Monnlungs Swamp; as the spring deepened, and all the flowers came out, Lanse and his little box went floating up to the Monnlungs almost every day.
Mrs. Rutherford had not seen her "boy;" he could not yet endure the motion of any carriage, even the easiest, across the long miles of pine-barren that lay between the river and East Angels, and it would require a brigade or two of negroes, so he said, to carry him all that distance in his litter. As soon as he should feel himself able to undertake so long a journey, he promised to go by steamer to the mouth of the St. John's; here theEmperadoracould meet him and take him southward by sea to the harbor of Gracias, thence down the lagoon to the landing of East Angels itself.
Aunt Katrina was therefore waiting. But this was a condition of things which somebody was very apt to be enjoying where Lanse was concerned. Lanse had a marked contempt for what he called a "panting life." Under these circumstances, as he never panted himself, there was apt to be somebody else who was panting; by a little looking about one could have found, almost every day, several persons who had the reverse side of his leisurely tastes to bear.
Aunt Katrina, in bearing hers, at least had her Betty; now that Margaret was absent, this good soul remained constantly at East Angels, not returning to her home at all. She led a sort of camping-out existence, however, for dear Kate never asked her to bring down a trunk and make herself comfortable; dear Kate always took the tone that her friend would return home, probably, "about the day after to-morrow." Betty, therefore, had with her only her old carpet-bag, which, though voluminous, had yet its limits; she was constantly obliged to contrive secret methods of getting necessary articles down from Gracias. She lived in this make-shift manner for a long stretch of weeks, heroically wearingher best gown all the time, because to have sent for the second best would have appeared to dear Kate like preparation for a longer visit than she seemed to think she should at present require.
Every day dear Kate wrote a little note of affectionate inquiry to Lanse. These notes were piled up in a particular place in the house on the river; after the first three or four, Lanse never read them. About twice a week Margaret would take it upon herself to reply; and then Mrs. Rutherford would say, "As though I wanted MargaretCruger'sanswers!" She explained to Betty that Margaret purposely kept Lanse from writing. And then Betty would shake her head slowly with her lips pursed up, but without venturing further answer; for she had already got herself into trouble with Katrina by expatiating warmly upon the "great comfort" it must be to "poor Mr. Harold" to have his wife with him once more.
"Nothing of the sort!" had been Katrina's brief response.
"Such a comfort toher, then, poor dear, to beableto devote herself to him in this time of trial."
"Margaretdevote herself!"
"Well, at least, dear Kate, it must be a great comfort toyouto have them together again, as they ought to be, of course," pursued Betty, hopefully. "It may be—who knows?—probably itwillbe without doubt, the beginning of atruereconciliation, atruehome."
"True fiddle-sticks! It shouldn't be, then, in my opinion, even if it could be; Margaret Cruger has beenmuchtoo leniently dealt with. After deserting her husband as she has done entirely all these years, she shouldn't have been taken back so easily, she should have been made to go down on herkneesbefore he forgave her."
"Dear me! do you really think so?" said Betty, dismayed by this picture. "And Mrs. Harold has so much sweet dignity, too."
"It should be stripped from her then, it's all hum; what right has MargaretCrugerto such an amount of dignity? Is she Alexandra, Princess of Wales, may I ask?"
"Do you know, I havealwaysthought she looked quite adeallike her," exclaimed Betty, delighted with this coincidence.
But Katrina's comparison had been an impersonal one, she was not thinking of the fair graceful Princess of the Danes. "My patience! Elizabeth Gwinnet, how dull you are sometimes!" she exclaimed, closing her eyes with a groan.
Elizabeth Gwinnet agreed that she was dull, agreed with an unresentful laugh. Katrina's epithets were a part of the vagaries of her illness, of course; if she, Betty, was sure of anything in this world, she was sure that she was an enormous comfort to her poor dear Kate. And under those circumstances one could agree to anything.
While helpless and in pain, Lansing Harold had been entirely absorbed in his own condition; even Margaret's arrival he had noticed but slightly. This strong, dark man took his illness as an extraordinary dispensation, a tragic miracle; he was surprised that Dr. Kirby was not more agitated, he was surprised that his two attendants, when they came, did not evince a deeper concern. Surely it was a case unprecedented, terrible; surely no one had ever had such an ordeal before. Not once did he emerge from his own personality and look upon his condition as part of the common lot; Lanse, indeed, had never believed that he belonged to the common lot.
He announced to everybody that Fate was treating him with frightful injustice. Why shouldhebe maimed and shackled in this way—he, a man who had always led a wholly simple, natural life?Hehad never shut himself up in an office, burned his eyes out over law papers, or narrowed his chest over ledgers;hehad never sacrificed his liberty in the sordid pursuit of money-getting. On the contrary, he had admired all beautiful things wherever they were to be found, he had breathed the fresh air of heaven, had seen all there was of life and nature, and enjoyed it all in a full, free, sane way. It was monstrous, it was ridiculous, to strike athim; strike, and welcome, at the men who kept their windows down! Thus he inveighed, thus he protested, and all in perfectly good faith; Lanse believed of himself exactly what he said.
But once established in a house of his own, and able tofloat about on the river, promptly his good-humor came back to him; for Lanse, while not in the least amiable, had always had an abundance of good-humor. He began to laugh again, he began to tell Margaret stories connected with his life abroad; Lanse's stories, though the language was apt to be as condensed as that of telegraphic despatches, were invariably good.
There had been no formal explanations between these two, no serious talk. Lanse hated serious talk; and as for explanations, as he had never in his life been in the habit of giving them, it was not likely that he was going to begin now. When Margaret first arrived, and he could scarcely see her from pain, he had managed to say, "Oh, you're back? glad to see you"—as though she had left him but the week before—and this matter-of-course tone he had adhered to ever since; it was the easier since his wife showed no desire to alter it.
He required no direct services from her, his men did everything. As he grew better, he gave her the position of a comrade whom it was a pleasure to meet when he came (in his wheeled chair) to the parlor in the evening; he thanked her gallantly for being there. In this way they lived on, Margaret had been for nine or ten weeks under the same roof with him before he made any allusion to their personal relations; even then it was only a remark or two, uttered easily, and as though he had happened to think of it just then. The remarks embodied the idea that the "interruption" (that was what he called it) which had occurred in their life together should be left undiscussed between them; it had happened, let it therefore remain "happened;" they couldn't improve it by chattering about it (an illusion of weak minds), but they could take up the threads again where they had left them, and go on without any "bother."
Later, he added a few words more; they were not taking up the threads, after all, just where they had left them, but in a much better place; for now they were relieved from any necessity for being sentimental. He admired her greatly, he didn't mind telling her that she had grown infinitely more interesting, as well as handsomer; but his having remained away from her as long as he had, and of his own accord, debarredhim, of course, from expecting personal affection from her, at least at present; he certainly didn't expect it, she might rest secure about that; on the other hand, he didn't believe, either—no, not in the least—that she had broken her heart very deeply abouthim. There was no better foundation than this state of affairs for the most comfortable sort of years together, if she would look at it in the right way. What was the cause of most of the trouble between husbands and wives nowadays?—by "nowadays" he meant in modern times, since women had been allowed to complain. Their being so foolish, wasn't it? on one side or the other, as to wish to absorb each other, control each other, in a petty, dogmatic, jealous sort of way. Now in their case there would not be any clashing of that sort; when people had lived apart as they had, voluntarily and contentedly, for eight years, they must at least have got out of the habit of asking prying questions, of expecting a report of everything that happened, of trying to dictate and govern; as to jealousy, it would be rather late in the day to begin that.
These were the only approaches Lanse had made towards a discussion of intimate topics. The reserve was not so remarkable in him as it might have been in another man, for Lanse seldom talked on intimate topics with anybody; his principle, so far as it could be gathered from his life, appeared to have been to allow himself, in actual fact (quiet fact), the most radical liberty of action, while at the same time in speech, in tastes, in general manner, he remained firmly, even aggressively, a conservative; Lanse's "manner" had been much admired. Always, so he would have said, he behaved "as a gentleman should," which had seemed to mean (according to his own idea of it) that he had no local views of anything, that he was fond of the fine arts and good guns, that he had a taste for ablutions and fresh air, for laced shoes and shooting-jackets, and that he never (it had not happened since his early youth, at least) lost control of himself through drink. All this went perfectly with his apparent frankness. It also went perfectly with his real reserves.
On the occasions when he had said his few words to Margaret, he had given her no chance to reply; he had made his remarks as he took up a book. Lanse was sure that he reada great deal, that he was very fond of reading; in reality he read almost nothing, he only turned to reading as a last resort; he was barbarically ignorant regarding the authors of his day, he liked best personal memoirs and letters of the last century; when these failed him, he reread Fielding—fortunately Fielding was inexhaustible.
He was in the habit of saying this. But one evening even Fielding palled.
It was when they had been for nearly two months in the house on the river. He had been out during most of the afternoon in his canoe; his two attendants had now established him upon his sofa, placed everything which they thought he might want within his reach, had adjusted his reading lamp (he had announced that he was going to read), and had then left him. They were to return at ten o'clock and help him to bed; for Lanse was obliged to keep early hours, the night was the dangerous time, and one of the men always slept on a cot bed in the room with him, so as to be within call.
Margaret was sitting near the larger table, where there was a second lamp; she was sewing. Having thrown down his volume, with the sudden realization (it came to him occasionally) that he knew every word of it before beginning, Lanse sat among his cushions, watching her hand come and go.
"You are always sewing on such long things!" he said. "What is the use of your doing that sort of work nowadays, when there are sewing-machines?"
"That's like the American who asked, in Venice, what was the use of people's sketching there nowadays, when there were photographs?"
"Oh, your seam is a work of art, is it?" said Lanse. He was silent for a moment. Then he took up an old grievance. "Evert is abominably selfish not to come over here oftener. He might just as well come over and stay; do you know any earthly reason why he shouldn't?"
"I suppose he thinks he ought not to leave Aunt Katrina—I mean for any length of time."
"He comes for no length, long or short. Aunt Katrina? I thought you said she'd got a lot of people?"
"Only Mrs. Carew."
"Mrs. Carew and five or six servants; that's enough in all conscience. I shouldn't care in the least about Evert if it weren't for the evenings, they're confoundedly long, you must admit that they are—for a person who doesn't sew seams; if I had Ev here I could at least beat him at checkers,—that would be something."
Checkers was the only game Lanse would play, he hated games generally. His method of playing this one was hopelessly bad. That made no difference in his being convinced that it was excellent. He blustered over it always.
Margaret had not answered. After a while, still idly watching her hand come and go, Lanse began to laugh. "No, I'll tell you what it really is, Madge; I know it as well as if he had drawn up a formal indictment and signed his name; he's all off with me on account of the way I've treated you."
She started; but she kept on taking her stitches.
"Yes. What do you say to my having told him the whole story—just what really happened, and without a shade of excusing myself in any way? Don't you call that pretty good of me? But I found out, too, what I didn't know before—that you yourself have never said a word all this time either to him or to Aunt Katrina; that you have told nothing. I call that pretty good ofyou; I dare say, in the mean while, Aunt Katrina has led you a life!"
"I haven't minded that—she didn't know—"
"It was really very fine of you," said Lanse, appreciatively, after a moment or two of silence, during which he had seemed to review her course, and to sincerely admire it. "It would have been so easy to have considered it your duty to tell, to have called the telling 'setting yourself right;' everybody would have been on your side—would have taken your part. But I can't say, after all, that I'm surprised," he went on. "I have always had the most perfect confidence in you, Madge. If I hadn't, I shouldn't have been so easy, of course, about going away; but I knew I could leave you, I knew I could trust you; I knew you would always be the perfect creature you have shown yourself to be."
"I'm not perfect at all," answered Margaret, throwing herwork down with a movement that was almost fierce. "Don't talk to me in that way."
"There! no need to flash out so; remember I'm only a cripple," responded Lanse, amiably. He sat there stroking his short beard with his strong, well-shaped hand, looking at her, as he did so, with some curiosity.
She rose. "Is there anything I can do for you before I go?" And she began to fold up her work.
"Oh, don't go! that's inhuman; it's only a little after nine—there's nearly an hour yet before the executioners come. I didn't mean to vex you, Madge; really I didn't. I know perfectly that you have done what you did, behaved as you have—so admirably (you must excuse my saying it again)—to please yourself, not me; you did it because you thought it right, and you don't want my thanks for it; you don't even want my admiration, probably you haven't a very high opinion of my admiration. I don't condole with you—you may have noticed that; the truth is, you have had your liberty, you have been rid of me, and there has been no disagreeable gossip about it. If you had loved me, there would have been the grief and all that to consider. But there has been no grief; you probably know now, though you didn't then, that you never seriously cared for me at all; of course youthoughtyou did."
Margaret was standing, her folded work in her hand, ready to leave the room. "I should—I should have tried," she answered, her eyes turned away.
"Tried? Of course you would have tried, poor child," responded Lanse, laughing. "I should have had that spectacle! You were wonderfully good, you had a great sense of duty; you really married me from duty—because I told you that I should go to the bad without you, and you believed it, and thought you must try; and you mistook the interest you felt in me on that account for affection—a very natural mistake at your age. Never mind all that now, I only want you to admit that I might have been worse, I might have been brutal, tyrannical, in petty ways, I might have been a pig; instead of leaving you as I did, I might have stayed at home—and made you wish that Ihadleft! Even now I scarcely touch your personal liberty; true, I askyou to keep house for me, set up a home and make me comfortable again; but outside of that I leave you very free, you shall do quite as you please. Luckily we've got money enough—that is, you have—not to be forced to sacrifice ourselves about trifles; if you want your breakfast at eight o'clock, and I mine at eleven, why, we can have it in that way; it won't be necessary for us to change our customs in the very least for each other, and I assure you in the long-run that tells. It's possible, of course, that you may hate me; but I don't believe you do; and, in case you don't, I see no reason why we shouldn't lead an easy life together. Really, looking at it in that way, it's a very pretty little prospect—for people of sense."
As he concluded with these words, genially uttered, Margaret dropped suddenly into a chair which was near her and covered her face with her hands.
Lanse looked at her, there was genuine kindness in his beautiful dark eyes with the yellow lights in them. "There's one question I might ask you, Margaret—but no, I won't; it's really none of my business. You will alwaysactlike an angel; your thoughts are your own affair."
Margaret still sat motionless, her face covered.
"I'm very sorry you feel so; I meant to be—I want to be—as considerate as possible. Great heavens!" Lanse went on, "what a fettered, restricted existence you women—the good ones—do lead! I have the greatest sympathy for you. When you're wretched, you can't do anything; you can't escape, and you can't take any of the compensations men take when they want to balance ill luck in other directions; all you can do is—sit still and bear it! I wonder you endure it as you do. But I won't talk about it, talking's all rot; short of killing myself, I don't know that there's anything I can do that would improve the situation; and that wouldn't be of any use either, at least to you, because it would leave you feeling guilty, and guilt you could never bear. Come, hold up your head, Madge; nothing in this stupid life is worth feeling so wretched about; life's nothing but rubbish, after all. Get the checker-board and we'll have a game."
Margaret had risen. "I can't to-night."
"But what am I to do, then?" began Lanse, in a complaining tone. He was as good as his word, he had already dismissed the subject from his mind. "Well, if you must go," he went on, "just hand me that book of poor Malleson's, first."
This was a book of sketches of the work of Mino da Fiesole, the loving, patient studies of a young American who had died in Italy years before, when Lanse was there. Lanse had been kind to him, at the last had closed his eyes, and had then laid him to sleep in that lovely shaded cemetery under the shadow of the pyramid outside the walls of Rome—sweet last resting-place that lingers in many a traveller's memory. The book of sketches had been left to him, and he was very fond of it.
As Margaret gave it to him he saw her face more clearly, saw the traces of tears under the dark lashes. "Yes, go and rest," he said, compassionately; "go to bed. I should reproach myself very much if I thought it was waiting upon me, care about me, that had tired you so."
"No, I have very little to do; the men do everything," Margaret answered. "I haven't half as much to attend to here as I have at home." She seemed to wish to reassure him on this point.
"At home?" said Lanse, jocularly. "What are you talking about? This is your home, isn't it?—wherever I happen to be."
But evidently his wife's self-control had been rudely shaken when her tears had mastered her, for now she could not answer him, she turned and left the room.
"Courage!" he called after her as she went towards the door. "You should do as I do—not mind trifles; you should shake them off."
She went with a swift step to her own room, and threw herself face downward upon a low couch, her head resting upon her clasped hands; the sudden movement loosened her hair, soon it began to slip from its fastenings and drop over her shoulders in a thick, soft, perfumed mass; then, falling forward, lock by lock, the long ends touched the floor.
As she lay thus behind her bolted doors, fighting with an unhappiness so deep that her whole heart was sobbing andcrying, though now she did not shed outwardly a tear, her husband, stroking his brown beard meditatively, was getting a great deal of enjoyment out of poor Malleson's book. Lanse had a very delicate taste in such matters; he knew a beautiful outline when he saw it, from a single palmetto against the blue, on a point in the St. John's, to these low reliefs of the sweetest sculptor of the Renaissance. Long before, he had told Margaret that he married her for her profile; slim, unformed girl as she was, there had been, from the first moment he saw her, an immense satisfaction for his eyes in the poise of her head and the clearness of her features every time she entered the room.
Whether he would have found any satisfaction in these same outlines, could he have seen them prone in their present abandonment, only himself could have told.
He would have said, probably, that he found no satisfaction at all. Lansing Harold, as has been remarked before, had a great deal of benevolence.
"I don't know how to tell you, Mrs. Harold, what has happened," began Dr. Kirby. "I cannot explain it even to myself." The Doctor was evidently very unhappy, and much disturbed.
He was in the sitting-room of the house on the river—a place not so desolate after eight months of Margaret's habitation there. She could not restore the blossoming vines to the stripped exterior, she could not bring to life again the old trees; but within she had made a great change; the rooms were fairly comfortable now, green blinds gave a semblance of the former leafy shade.
But more than the rooms was the mistress of them herself transformed. The change was not one of manner or expression; it was the metamorphosis which can be produced by a complete alteration of dress. For Lanse had objected to the simplicity of his wife's attire, and especially to the plain, close arrangement of her hair. "You don't mean it,I know," he said, "but it has an appearance of affectation, a sort of 'holier than thou' air. I hate to see women going about in that way; it looks as if they thought themselves so beautiful that they didn't mind calling attention to it—with sanctimonious primness, of course; it's the most conspicuous thing a woman can do."
"It's not a matter of principle with me; it's only my taste," Margaret answered. "I have always liked simplicity in others, and so I have dressed in that way myself."
"Alter it, then; with your sort of face you couldn't possibly look flashy; and you might look prettier—less like a saint. There, don't be enraged, I know you haven't a grain of that kind of pose. But it seems to me, Margaret, that you might very well dress to please me, since I regard you as a charming picture, keeping my hands off." And he laughed.
The next steamer that touched at the long pier (it was not two hours afterwards) took from there half a dozen hastily written letters to carry north.
"What in the world—why, I hardlyknewyou," Aunt Katrina said, ten days later, when her niece came over to East Angels to see her; now that Lanse was better, she could come oftener.
"Lanse wished it," Margaret answered as she took her seat.
"And very properly. You certainly had a most tiresome way of having your things made—so deadly plain; it looked as if you wanted people to think you either very Quakerish or very miserable, I never knew which."
"If I had been miserable I shouldn't have paid so much attention to it, should I? It takes a great deal of attention to dress in that way." She spoke, if not smilingly, then at least in the even tone which people now called "always so cheerful."
"Oh, I don't know what you reallywere, I only meant how you looked. I am glad, at least, that you acknowledge that it takes a great stock of vanity to go against all the fashions. Well, you don't look Quakerish now!"
"You like the dress, then?"
"It'slovely," said Aunt Katrina, scanning every detail from the hat to the shoe. "Expensive, of course?"
"Yes."
"And Lanse likes that?"
"He wishes me to dress richly; he says it's more becoming to me."
"I think that's so nice of him, he wants you to look, I suppose, as well as youcan" said Aunt Katrina, magnanimously. "And certainly you do look a great deal better."
Whether Margaret looked better was a question whose answer depended upon the personal taste of those who saw her; she looked, at least, very different. The sumptuous wrap with its deep fringes, the lace of the scarf, the general impression of costly fabrics and of color in her attire, brought out the outlines of her face, as the curling waves of her hair over her forehead deepened the blue of her eyes. On her white arms now, at home in the evenings, bracelets gleamed, the flash of rings came from her little hands; her slender figure trailed behind it rich silks of various light hues.
"You are a beautiful object nowadays, Margaret," Lanse said more than once. "Fancy your having known how, all this time, without ever having used your talent!"
"It's my dress-maker's talent."
"Yes; she must have a great deal to carry out your orders."
He was especially pleased one evening. She came in, bringing his newspaper, which had just arrived by the steamer; she was dressed in a long gleaming gown of satin, with long tight sleeves; she wore a little ruff of Venetian lace, there was a golden comb in her dark-hair. A fan made of the bright plumage of some tropical bird lay against the satin of her skirt; it hung by a ribbon from the broad satin belt, which, fastened by a golden buckle, defined her slender waist.
"You look like a fine old engraving," he said.
She stood holding the paper towards him. But for a moment he did not take it, he was surveying her critically; then he lifted his eyes to her face, there was a smile in them. "You did it—do it—to please me?" he said.
She did not answer.
"Because you think it your duty to do what I wish. And because, too, you are a trifle afraid of me!" He laughed. "It would have an even better effect, though, if you wouldn'ttake it quite so seriously; couldn't you contrive to get a little pleasure out of it on your own account?—I mean the looking so handsome."
She gave him the paper, and went across to her work-table. "I am delighted to look handsome," she said.
"No, you're not. It was probably easier for you to dress as you used to—plainly; more in accordance with your feelings, women like to be in accordance. When they're completely satisfied, or very unhappy, they brush their hair straight back from their faces. Well, yours curls enough now!"
"The truth is, Madge, you're too yielding," he resumed after a short silence. "I take advantage of it, of course—I always shall; but you would get on a great deal better yourself, you might even have had more influence over me (if you care about that), if you had been, if you were now, a little less—patient."
"I suppose there's no use in my repeating that I'm not patient at all," answered Margaret. She was taking some balls of silk from the drawer.
"You want me to think it's self-control. Well, perhaps it is. But then, you know, unbroken self-control—"