But this secondary consciousness was small: it was small because the first was so wide and deep, and so filled with trouble—trouble composed inequal parts of perplexity, disappointment, and grief. She was at home, and she was not happy. This was a conjunction of conditions which she had not believed could be possible.
She had never had any disagreements with her father's wife, and she had been fond of her in a certain way. But the wife had never been to the daughter more than an adjunct—something added to her father, of qualifying but not independent importance; a little moon, bright, if you pleased, and pretty, but still a satellite revolving round its sun. As a child, she had accepted the new mother upon this basis, because she could make everything "more pleasant for papa;" and she had gone on accepting her upon the same basis ever since. Madam Carroll knew this. She had never quarrelled with it. She and her daughter had filled their respective positions in entire amity. But now that this daughter had come home to live, now that she was no longer a school-girl or child, this was what she had discovered: her father, her idol, had turned from her, and his wife had gained what his daughter had lost. There could be no doubt but that he had turned from her; his manner towards her was entirely changed. He seemed no longer to care to have her with him; he seemed to avoid her; he was not interested in anything that was connected with her—he who hadformerly been so full of interest; he never kept up a conversation with her, but let it drop as soon as he could; he was so—so strange! Although she had now been at home two weeks, she had scarcely once been alone with him; Madam Carroll had either been present from the beginning, or she had soon come in; Madam Carroll had led the conversation, suggested the topics. The Major had always been fond of his pretty little wife; but he had also been devoted to his daughter. The change in him she could not understand; it made her very unhappy. It would have made her more than that—made her wretched beyond the possibility of concealment—had there not been in it an element of perplexity; perplexity which bewildered her, which she could not solve. For, while her own position and her father's regard for her seemed completely changed, life at the Farms went on day after day upon the distinct assumption that there was no change, that everything was precisely as it always had been. This assumption was not only mentioned, but insisted upon, the Major's wife often alluding with amusement to what she called their "dear obstinate old ways."
"The Major ties his cravat precisely as he did twenty-five years ago—he has acknowledged it to me," she said, glancing at him merrily. "We havethe same things for dinner; we wear the same clothes, or others made exactly like them; we read the same books because we think them so much better than the new; we discuss the same old topics for the same prejudiced old reason. We remain so obstinately unchanged that even Time himself does not remember who we are. Each year when he comes round he thinks we belong to a younger generation."
The Major always laughed at these sallies of his wife. "You forget, my dear, my gray hairs," he said.
"Gray hairs are a distinction," answered Madam Carroll, decisively. "And besides, Major, they're the only sign of age about you; your figure, your bearing, are as they always were."
And on Sundays, when he carried round the plate at St. John's, and at his wife's receptions once in two weeks, this was true.
Sara came out of her troubled revery at the sound of Madam Carroll's voice. This lady was going on with her subject, as her step-daughter had not spoken.
"Yes, Caroline Dalley is really very intelligent; she is one of the subscribers for ourSaturday Review. You know we subscribe for one copy—about twelve families of our little circle here—and it goes to all in turn, beginning with the Farms. The Major selected it; the Major prefers its tone to that ofour American journals as they are at present. Not that he cares for the long articles. With his—his wide experience, you know, thelongarticles could only be tiresome; they weary him greatly."
"I must have tired him, then, this morning; I read some of the long articles aloud."
"You had forgotten; you have been so long absent. It was very natural, I am sure. You will soon recall those little things."
"How can I recall what I never knew? No, mamma, it is not that; it is the—the change. I am perplexed all the time. I don't know what to do."
"It isn't so much what to do as what not to do," replied Madam Carroll, looking now at the lounge she had designed, and surveying it with her head a little on one side, so as to take in its perspective. "The Major has not yet recovered entirely from his illness of last winter, you know, and his strength cannot be overtaxed. A—a tranquil solitude is the best thing for him most of the time. I often go out of the room myself purposely, leaving him alone, or with Scar, whose childish talk, of course, makes no demand upon his attention; I do this to avoid tiring him."
"I don't thinkyouever tire him," said Sara.
The Major's wife glanced at her step-daughter; then she resumed her consideration of the lounge."That is because I have been with him so constantly. I have learned. You will soon learn also. And then we shall have a very happy little household here at the Farms."
"I doubt it," said the girl, despondently. She paused. "I am afraid I am a disappointment to my father," she went on, with an effort, but unable longer to abstain from putting her fear into words—words which should be in substance, if not in actual form, a question. "I am afraid that as a woman, no longer a school-girl or child, I am not what he thought I should be, and therefore whenever I am with him he is oppressed by this. Each day I see less of him than I did the day before. There seems to be no time for me, no place. He has just told me that all his mornings would be occupied; by that he must have meant simply that he did not wantme." Tears had come into her eyes as she spoke, but she did not let them fall.
"You are mistaken," said Madam Carroll, earnestly. Then in her turn she paused. "I venture to predict that soon, very soon, you will find yourself indispensable to your father," she added, in her usual tone.
"Never as you are," answered Sara. She spoke with a humility which, coming from so proud a girl, was touching. For the first time in her lifeshe was acknowledging her step-mother's superiority.
Madam Carroll rose, came across, and kissed her. "My dear," she said, "a wife has more opportunities than a daughter can have; that is all. The Major loves you as much as ever. He is also very proud of you. So proud, indeed, that he has a great desire to have you proud of him as well; you always have been extremely proud of him, you know, and he remembers it. This feeling causes him, perhaps, to make something of—of an effort when he is with you, an effort to appear in every respect himself, as he was before his illness—as he was when you last saw him. This effort is at times fatiguing to him; yet it is probable that he will not relinquish it while he feels that you are noticing or—or comparing. I have not spoken of this before, because you have never liked to have me tell you anything about your father; even as a child you always wanted to get your knowledge directly from him, not from me. I have never found fault with this, because I knew that it came from your great love for him. As I love him too, I have tried to please, or at least not to displease, his daughter; not to cross her wishes, her ideas; not to seem to her officious, presuming. Yet at the same time remember that I love him probably as much as you do. But nowthat you have asked me, now that I know you wish me to speak, I will say that if you could remove all necessity for the effort your father now makes, by placing yourself so fully upon a lower plane—if I may so express it—that his former self should not be suggested to him by anything inyou, in your words, looks, or manner, you would soon find, I think, that this slight—slight constraint you have noticed was at an end. In addition, he himself would be more comfortable. And our dearest wish is of course to make him happy and comfortable, to keep him so."
As she uttered these sentences quietly, guardedly, Sara had grown very pale. Her eyes, large and dark with pain, were searching her step-mother's fair little face. But Madam Carroll's gaze was fixed upon the window opposite; not until she had brought all her words to a close did she let it drop upon her daughter. Then the two women looked at each other. The girl's eyes asked a mute question, a question which the wife's eyes, seeing that it was an appeal to her closer knowledge, at length answered—answered bravely and clearly, sympathetically, too, and with tenderness, but—in the affirmative.
Then the daughter bowed her head, her face hidden in her hands.
Madam Carroll sat down upon the arm of the easy-chair, and drew that bowed head towards her. No more words were spoken. But now the daughter understood all. Her perplexity and her trouble were at an end; but they ended in a grief, as a river ends in the sea—a grief that opened out all round her, overwhelming the present, and, as it seemed to her then, the future as well. Madam Carroll said nothing; the bereavement was there, and the daughter must bear it. No one could save her from her pain. But the girl knew from this very silence, and the gentle touch of the hand upon her hair, that all her sorrow was comprehended, her desolation pitied, understood. For her father had been her idol, her all; and now he was taken from her. His mind was failing. This was the bereavement which had fallen upon her heart and life.
ATsunset of the same day Madam Carroll was in her dining-room; she had changed her dress, and now wore a fresh muslin, with a bunch of violets in her belt. Sara, coming down the stairs, saw the bright little figure through the open door; Judith Inches was bringing in the kettle (for Madam Carroll always made the tea herself), and on the table were one or two hot dishes of a delicate sort, additions to the usual meal. Sara recognized in these added dishes the never-failing touch of the mistress's hand upon the household helm. The four-o'clock dinner had come and gone, but no summons had been sent to her—that pitiless summons which in so many households remains inflexible, though stricken hearts may be longing for solitude, for a respite, however brief, from the petty duties of the day. Through the long hours of the afternoon there had been no knock, not so much even as a footstep outside her door. But now, in the cool of the evening, the one who had thus protected her seclusionwas hoping that she would of her own accord come down and take again her accustomed place at the family table. Sara did this. She did more. She had put away the signs of her grief so completely that, save for an added pallor and the dark half-circle under her eyes, she was quite herself again. Her soft hair was smooth, her black dress made less severe by a little white scarf which encircled the narrow linen collar. Scar was sitting on the bottom stair as she came down. She put her hand on his head. "Where is papa?" she said.
"Papa is in the library. I think he is not coming out to tea," answered the child.
"Oh, but we must make him come—the dining-room is so dull without papa. Let us go and ask him." She took his hand, and they went together to the library. Madam Carroll, who had heard their words through the open door, watched them go. She did not interfere. She told Judith Inches to take back the hot dishes to the kitchen.
The Major was sitting in his easy-chair, looking at the pictures in an old book. He closed the volume and hastily drew off his spectacles as his daughter came in. "It has been a beautiful afternoon," he remarked, speaking promptly and decidedly. "Have you been out? or were you at home with a book—in your old way? What do you find to readnowadays? I find almost nothing." And he folded his arms with a critical air.
"I find little that can be compared with the old English authors, the ones you like," answered his daughter. "The old books are better than the new."
"So they are, so they are," replied the Major, with satisfaction. "I have often made the remark myself."
"Now that I am at home again," continued Sara, "I want to look over all those old books I used to have before I went to Longfields—those that were called mine. I hope we have them still?"
"Yes," said Scar, in his deliberate little voice, "we have. I read them now. And the long words I look out in the dictionary."
"It is a very good exercise for him. I suggested it," said the Major.
"I want to see all their old pictures again," pursued Sara. "I know I shall care a great deal about them; they will be like dear old friends."
"Very natural; I quite understand the feeling," said the Major, encouragingly. "And as Scar reads the books, perhaps you will find some of them lying about this very room. Let me see—didn't I have one just now? Yes, here it is; what was it?" And taking up the volume he had laid down a moment before, he opened it, and read, or repeated with the air of reading (for his spectacles were off), "'TheLife and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and his Servant-man Friday. Defoe. London.'"
Sara came to his side and looked at the title-page. "Yes, that is my dear old book. I loved it better than any other, excepting, perhaps, 'Good Queen Bertha's Honey-Broth.' I wonder if the old pictures are all there?"
"I think they are," said the Major, turning the leaves. They looked at one or two together, recalling reminiscences of the days when she used to talk about them as a child. "You always insisted that this print of Friday's foot was not of the right shape, and once you even went out in the garden, took off your shoe and stocking, and made a print in a flower-bed to show me," said the Major, laughing.
"Let us look them all over after tea, and 'Good Queen Bertha' too," said Sara. "For Scar and I have come to take you out to tea, father; the dining-room is so dull without you. Besides, I want you to give me some peach preserves, and then say, 'No, Sara, not again,' when I ask for more; and then, after a few minutes, put a large table-spoonful on my plate with your head turned away, while talking to some one else, as though unconscious of what you were doing."
Scar laughed over this anecdote, and so did Scar'sfather. "But perhaps we shall have no peach preserve," he said, rising.
"We will ask mamma to give us some," answered Sara. She took his arm, and Scar took his other hand; thus together they entered the dining-room.
Madam Carroll welcomed them; but placidly, as though the Major's coming was a matter of course. Since his daughter's return, however, it had not been a matter of course: first for this reason, then for that, his meals had almost always been sent to the library. Now he was tired; and now the dining-room floor might be damp after Judith Inches' scrubbing-brush; now there was an east wind, and now there was a west; or else he was not feeling well, and some one might "drop in," in which case, as the dining-room opened only into the hall, which was wide, like a room, he should not be able to escape. In actual fact, however, there was very little "dropping in" at Carroll Farms, unless one should give that name to the visits of the rector, Mr. Owen. Once in a while, in the evening, when the weather was decisively pleasant, the junior warden came to see them. But all their other acquaintances came to the receptions, made a brief call upon the first Thursday afternoon following, and that was all. The sweet little mistress of the mansion had never uttered one syllable upon the subject, yet eachmember of the circle of Far Edgerley society knew as well as though it had been proclaimed through the town by a herald with a silver trumpet emblazoned with the Carroll arms, that these bimonthly receptions (which were so delightful) and the brief following call comprised all the visits they were expected to pay at Carroll Farms. And surely, when one considered the great pleasure and also improvement derived from these receptions, the four visits a month at the Farms were worth more than forty times four visits at any other residence in the village or its neighborhood. True, Mrs. Hibbard endeavored to maintain an appearance of importance at her mansion of yellow wood called Chapultepec; but as General Hibbard (of the Mexican War) had now been dead eight years, and as his old house had not been opened for so much as the afternoon sewing society since his departure, its importance, socially considered, existed only in the imagination of his relict—which was, however, in itself quite a domain.
Judith Inches, tall and serious, now brought back the hot dishes, Madam Carroll made the tea (with many pretty little motions and attitudes, which her husband watched), and the meal began. The Major was in excellent spirits. He told stories of Sara's childhood, her obstinacy, her never-failing questions."She came to me once, Scar," he said, "and announced that Galileo was a humbug. When I asked her why, she said that there was good King David, who knew all about astronomy long before he did; for didn't he say, 'the round world, and they that dwell therein'? We sang it every Sunday. So that proved plain as day that David knew that the world was round, and that it moved, and all about it, of course. Yet here was this old Italian taking everything to himself! Just like Amerigo Vespucci, another old Italian, who had all America named after himself, leaving poor Columbus, the real discoverer, with nothing but 'Hail, Columbia!' to show for it. She announced all this triumphantly and at the top of her voice, from a window; for I was in the garden. When I told her that the word 'round,' upon which all her argument had been founded, was not in the original text, you should have seen how crest-fallen she was. She said she should never sing that chant again."
Scar laughed over this story. He did not laugh often, but when he did, it was a happy little sound, which made every one join in it by its merry glee.
"I am afraid I was a very self-conceited little girl, Scar," his sister said.
As the meal went on, the Major's manner grew all the time more easy. His eyes were no longerrestless. His old attention returned, too, in a measure; he kept watch of his wife's plate to ask if she would not have something more; he remembered that Sara preferred bread to the beat biscuit, and placed it near her. The meal ended, they went back to the library. Sara found her old copy of "Good Queen Bertha's Honey-Broth," and she and her father looked at the pictures together, as well as at those of "Robinson Crusoe." Each had its association, a few recalled by him, but many more by her. After Scar had gone to bed, and the books had been laid aside, she still sat there talking to him. She talked of her life at Longfields, telling stories in connection with it—stories not long—bright and amusing. The Major's wife meanwhile sat near them, sewing; she sat with her back to the lamp, in order that the light might fall over her shoulder upon the seam. The light did the work she assigned to it, but it also took the opportunity to play over her curls in all sorts of winsome ways, to gleam on her thimble, to glide down her rosy muslin skirt, and touch her little slipper. She said hardly anything; but, as they talked on, every now and then she looked up appreciatively, and smiled. At last she folded up her work, replacing it in her neat rose-lined work-basket; then she sat still in her low chair, with her feet on a footstool, listening.
The old clock, with its fierce gilt corsair climbing over a glass rock, struck ten.
"Bed-time," said Sara, pausing.
"Not for me," observed the Major. "My time for sleep is always brief; five or six hours are quite enough."
"I remember," said his daughter. And the memory, as a memory, was a true one. Until recently the Major's sleep had been as he described it. He had forgotten, or rather he had never been conscious of, the long nights of twelve or thirteen hours' rest which had now become a necessity to him.
"I am afraid I am not like you, father. I am very apt to be sleepy about ten," said Sara. "And I suspect it is the same with mamma."
Madam Carroll did not deny this assertion. The Major, laughing at the early somnolence of the two ladies, rose to light a candle for his daughter, in the old way. As she took it, and bent to kiss her stepmother good-night, Madam Carroll's eyes met hers, full of an expression which made them bright (ordinarily they were not bright, but soft); the expression was that of warm congratulation.
The next day dawned fair and cloudless—Trinity Sunday. The mountain breeze and the warm sun together made an atmosphere fit for a heaven. On the many knolls of Far Edgerley the tall grass, carryingwith it the slender stalks of the buttercups, was bending and waving merrily; the red clover, equally abundant, could not join in this dance, because it had crowded itself so greedily into the desirable fields that all that its close ranks could do was to undulate a little at the top, like a swell passing over a pond. Madam Carroll, the Major, and Scar were to drive to church as usual, in the equipage. Sara had preferred to walk. She started some time before the hour for service, having a fancy to stroll under the churchyard pines for a while by herself. These pines were noble trees; they had belonged to the primitive forest, and had been left standing along the northern border of the churchyard by the Carroll who had first given the land for the church a hundred years before. The ground beneath them was covered with a thick carpet of their own brown aromatic needles. There were no graves here save one, of an Indian chief, who slept by himself with his face towards the west, while all his white brethren on the other side turned their closed eyes towards the rising sun. It was a beautiful rural God's-acre, stretching round the church in the old-fashioned way, so that the shadow of the cross on the spire passed slowly over all the graves, one by one, as the sun made his journey from the peak of Chillawassee across to LonelyMountain, behind whose long soft line he always sank, and generally in such a blaze of beautiful light that the children of the village grew up in the vague belief that the edge of the world must be just there, that there it rounded and went downward into a mysterious golden atmosphere, in which, some day, when they had wings, they, too, should sport and float like birds.
Early though it was, Miss Carroll discovered when she entered the church gate that she was not the first comer; the choir ladies were practising within, and other ladies of floral if not musical tastes were arranging mountain laurel in the font and chancel—to the manifest disapproval of Flower, the disapproval being expressed in the eye he had fixed upon them, his "mountain eye," as he called his best one. "It be swep, and it be dustered," he said to himself. "What more do the reasonless female creatures want?" Miss Carroll had not joined the choir, although the rector, prompted by his junior warden, had suggested it; Miss Sophia Greer would, therefore, continue to sing the solos undisturbed. She was trying one now. And the other ladies were talking. But this music, this conversation, this arrangement of laurel, and this disapproval of Flower went on within the church. The new-comer had the churchyard to herself; she went over to the pineson its northern side, and strolled to and fro at the edge of the slope, looking at the mountains, whose peaks rose like a grand amphitheatre all round her against the sky.
Her face was sad, but the bitterness, the revolt, were gone; her eyes were quiet and sweet. She had accepted her sorrow. It was a great one. At first it had been overwhelming; for all the brightness of the past had depended upon her father, all her plans for the present, her hopes for the future. His help, his comprehension, his dear affection and interest, had made up all her life, and she did not know how to go on without them, how to live. Never again could she depend upon him for guidance, never again have the exquisite happiness of his perfect sympathy—for he had always understood her, and no one else ever had, or at least so she thought. She had cared only for him, she had found all her companionship in him; and now she was left alone.
But after a while Love rose, and turned back this tide. The sharp personal pain, the bitter loneliness, gave way to a new tenderness for the stricken man himself. Evidently he was at times partly conscious of this lethargy which was fettering more and more his mental powers, for he exerted himself, he tried to remember, he tried to be brighter, to talk in the old way. And who could tell but that he perceivedhis failure to accomplish this? Who could tell, when he was silent so often, sitting with his eyes on the carpet, that he was not brooding over it sadly? For a man such as he had been, this must be deep suffering—deep, even though vague—like the sensation of falling in a dream, falling from a height, and continuing to fall, without ever reaching bottom. Probably he did not catch the full reality; it constantly eluded him; yet every now and then some power of his once fine mind might be awake long enough to make him conscious of a lack, a something that gave him pain, he knew not why. As she thought of this, all her heart went out to him with a loving, protecting tenderness which no words could express; she forgot her own grief in thinking of his, and her trouble took the form of a passionate desire to make him happy; to keep even this dim consciousness always from him, if possible; to shield him from contact with the thoughtless and unfeeling; to so surround his life with love, like a wall, that he should never again remember anything of his loss, never again feel that inarticulate pain, but be like one who has entered a beautiful, tranquil garden, to leave it no more.
This morning, under the pines, she was thinking of all this, as she walked slowly to and fro past the Indian's grave. Flower came out to ring his firstbell. His "first bell" was unimportant, made up of short, business-like notes; he rang it in his working jacket, an old mountain homespun coat, whose swallow-tails had been cut off, so that it now existed as a roundabout. But when, twenty minutes later, he issued forth a second time, he was attired in a coat of thin but shining black, with butternut trousers and a high pink calico vest. Placing his hat upon the ground beside him, he took the rope in his hand, made a solemn grimace or two to get his mouth into position, and then, closing his eyes, brought out with gravity the first stroke of his "second bell." His second bell consisted of dignified solo notes, with long pauses between. Flower's theory was that each of these notes echoed resonantly through its following pause. But as the bell of St. John's was not one of size or resonance, he could only make the pauses for the echoes which should have been there.
As the first note of this second bell sounded from the elm, all the Episcopal doors of Far Edgerley opened almost simultaneously, and forth came the congregation, pacing with Sunday step down their respective front paths, opening their gates, and proceeding decorously towards St. John's in groups of two or three, or a family party of father, mother, and children, the father a little in advance. They all arrived in good season, passed the semi-unconsciousFlower ringing his bell, and entered the church. Next, after an interval, came "clatter," "clatter:" they knew that "the equipage" was coming up the hill. Then "clank," "clank:" the steps were down.
All now turned their heads, but only to the angle which was considered allowable—less than profile, about a quarter view of the face, with a side glance from one eye. To them, thus waiting, now entered their senior warden, freshly dressed, gloved, carrying his hat and his large prayer-book; and as he walked up the central aisle, a commanding figure, with noble head, gray hair, and military bearing, he was undoubtedly a remarkably handsome, distinguished-looking man.
Behind him, but not too near, came the small figures of Madam Carroll and Scar, the lady in a simple summer costume of lavender muslin, with many breezy little ruffles, and lavender ribbons on her gypsy hat, the delicate hues causing the junior warden to exclaim (afterwards) that she looked like "a hyacinth, sir; a veritable hyacinth!" Scar, in a black velvet jacket (she had made it for him out of an old cloak), carrying his little straw hat, held his mother's hand. The Major stopped at his pew, which was the first, near the chancel; he turned, and stood waiting ceremoniously for his wife toenter. She passed in with Scar; he followed, and they took their seats. Then the congregation let its chin return to a normal straightness, the bell stopped, Alexander Mann (to use his own expression) "blew up," and Miss Millie began.
Miss Carroll came in a minute or two late. But there was no longer much curiosity about Miss Carroll. It was feared that she was "cold;" and it was known that she was "silent;" she had almost no "conversation." Now, Far Edgerley prided itself upon its conversation. It never spoke of its domestic affairs in company; light topics of elegant nature were then in order. Mrs. Greer, for instance, had Horace Walpole's Letters—which never failed. Other ladies preferred the cultivation of flowers, garden rock-work, and their bees (they allowed themselves to go as far as bees, because honey, though of course edible, was so delicate). Mrs. Rendlesham, who was historical, had made quite a study of the characteristics of Archbishop Laud. And the Misses Farren were greatly interested in Egyptian ceramics. Senator Ashley, among many subjects, had also his favorite; he not infrequently turned his talent for talking loose upon the Crimean War. This was felt to be rather a modern topic. But the junior warden was, on the whole, the most modern man they had. Too modern, some persons thought.
JULYpassed, and August began. Sara Carroll had spent the weeks in trying to add to her father's comfort, and trying also to alter herself so fully, when with him, that she should no longer be a burden upon his expectation, a care upon his mind. In the first of these attempts she was and could be but an assistant, and a subordinate one, filling the interstices left by Madam Carroll. For the Major depended more and more each day upon his little wife. Her remarks always interested him, her voice he always liked to hear; he liked to know all she was doing, and where she went, and what people said to her; he liked to look at her; her bright little gowns and sunny curls pleased his eye, and made him feel young again, so he said. He had come, too, to have a great pride in her, and this pride had grown dear to him; it now made one of the important ingredients of his life. He liked to mention what a fine education she had had; he liked to say that her mother had been a "Forster of Forster's Island," and that her fatherwas an Episcopal clergyman who had "received his education at Oxford." He thought little Scar had "English traits," and these he enumerated. He had always been a proud man, and now his pride had centred itself in her. But if his pride was strong, his affection was stronger; he was always content when she was in the room, and he never liked to have her long absent. When he was tired, she knew it; he was not obliged to explain. All his moods she comprehended; he was not obliged to define them. And when he did appear in public, at church on Sundays, or at her receptions, it was she upon whom he relied, who kept herself mentally as well as in person by his side, acting as quick-witted outrider, warding off possible annoyance, guiding the conversation towards the track he preferred, guarding his entrances and exits, so that above all and through all her other duties and occupations, his ease and his pleasure were always made secure.
Of all this his daughter became aware only by degrees. It went on so unobtrusively, invisibly almost, that only when she had begun to study the subject of her father's probable needs in connection with herself, what she could do to add to his comfort, only then did she comprehend the importance of these little hourly actions of Madam Carroll, comprehend what a safeguard they kept all the timeround his tranquillity, how indispensable they were to his happiness. For the feeling he had had with regard to his daughter extended, though in a less degree, to all Far Edgerley society; he wished—and it was now his greatest wish—to appear at his best when any one saw him. And, thanks to the devotion and tact of his wife, to her watchfulness (which never seemed to watch), to the unceasing protection she had thrown round his seclusion, and the quiet but masterly support she gave when he did appear, no one in the village was as yet aware that any change had come to the Major, save a somewhat invalid condition, the result of his illness of the preceding winter.
Sara herself had now learned how much this opinion of the Far Edgerley public was to her father; he rested on Saturday almost all day in order to prepare for Sunday, and the same preparation was made before each of the receptions. At these receptions she could now be of use; she could take Madam Carroll's place from time to time, stand beside him and keep other people down to his topics, prevent interruptions and sudden changes of subject, move with him through the rooms, as, with head erect and one hand in the breast of his coat, he passed from group to group, having a few words with each, and so much in the old way that whenat length he retired, excusing himself on account of his health, he left unbroken the impression which all Far Edgerley cherished, the impression of his distinguished appearance, charming conversation, and polished, delightful manners.
During these weeks, the more his daughter had studied him and the ways to make herself of use to him, even if not a pleasure, the greater had become her admiration for the little woman who was his wife—who did it all, and so thoroughly! who did it all, and so tenderly! What she, the daughter, with all her great love for him, could think out only with careful effort, the wife divined; what she did with too much earnestness, the wife did easily, lightly. Her own words when she was with him were considered, planned; but the wife's talk flowed on as naturally and brightly as though she had never given a thought to adapting it to him; yet always was it perfectly adapted. Sara often sat looking at Madam Carroll, during these days, with a wonder at her own long blindness; a wonder also that such a woman should have borne always in silence, and with unfailing gentleness, her step-daughter's moderate and somewhat patronizing estimate of her. But even while she was thinking of these things Madam Carroll would perhaps rise and cross the room, stopping to pat dog Carlo on the rug as she passed, andshe would seem so small and young, her very prettiness so unlike the countenance and expression one associates with a strong character, that the daughter would unconsciously fall back into her old opinion of her, always, however, to emerge from it again hurriedly, remorsefully, almost reverentially, upon the next example of the exquisite tact, tenderness, and care with which she surrounded and propped up her husband's broken days.
But the Major's life was now very comfortable. His daughter, if she had not as yet succeeded in doing what she did without thought over it, had, at least, gradually succeeded in relieving him from all feeling of uneasiness in her society: she now came and went as freely as Scar. She had made her manner so completely unexpectant and (apparently) unobservant, she had placed herself so entirely on a line with him as he was at present, that nothing led him to think of making an effort; he had forgotten that he had ever made one. She talked to him on local subjects, generally adding some little comment that amused him; she had items about the garden and fields or dog Carlo to tell him; but most of all she talked to him of the past, and led him to talk of it. For the Major had a much clearer remembrance of his boyhood and youth than he had of the events of later years, and not only a clearer remembrance, buta greater interest; he liked to relate his adventures of those days, and often did it with spirit and zest. He was willing now to have her present at "Scar's lessons;" she formed sentences in her turn from the chivalrous little manuscript book, and took part in the game of dominoes that followed. The Major grew into the habit also of taking an afternoon walk with her about the grounds—always at a safe distance from the entrance gate. They went to visit the birds' nests she had discovered, and count the eggs or fledglings, and he recalled his boyhood knowledge of birds, which was clear and accurate; they went down to the pond made by the brook, and sent in dog Carlo for a bath; they strolled through the orchard to see how the apples were coming on, and sat for a while on a bench under the patriarch tree. These walks became very precious to the daughter; her father enjoyed them, enjoyed so much the summer atmosphere, pure and fresh and high, yet aromatic also with the scents from the miles of unbroken pine and fir forest round about, enjoyed so much looking at the mountains, noting the moving bands of light and shadow cast upon their purple sides as the white clouds sailed slowly across the sky, that sometimes for an hour at a time he would almost be his former self again. He knew this when it happened, and it madehim happy. And Sara was so glad to see him happy that she began to feel, and with surprise, as if she herself too might be really happy again, happy after all.
This first little beginning of happiness grew and budded like a flower; for now more and more her father asked for her, wanted her with him; he took her arm as they walked about the grounds, and she felt as glad and proud as a child because she was tall enough and strong enough to be of real use to him. She remembered the desolation of those hours when she had thought that she should never be of use to him again, should have no place beside him, should be to him only a care and a dread; thinking of this, she was very thankfully happy. When she could do something for him, and he was pleased, it seemed to her almost as if she had never loved him so much; for, added to her old strong affection, there was now that deep and sacred tenderness which fills the heart when the person one loves becomes dependent—trustingly dependent, like a little child—upon one's hourly thought and care.
The rector of St. John's had continued those visits which Miss Carroll had criticised as too frequent. When he came he seldom saw his senior warden; but the non-appearance was sufficiently excused by the state of the senior warden's health, as well asmade up for by the presence of his wife. For Madam Carroll was charming in her manner to the young clergyman, always giving him the kind of welcome which made him feel sure that she was glad to see him, and that she wished him to come again. As he continued to come, it happened now and then that the mistress of the house would be engaged, and unable to see him. Perhaps she was reading to the Major from hisSaturday Review; and this was something which no one else could do in the way he liked. She alone knew how to select the items he cared to hear, and, what was more important, how to leave the rest unread; she alone knew how to give in a line an abstract that was clear to him, and how to enliven the whole with gay little remarks of her own, which, she said, he must allow her—a diversion for her smaller feminine mind. The Major greatly valued hisSaturday Review; he would have been much disturbed if deprived of the acquaintance it gave him with the events of the day. Not that he enjoyed listening to it; but when it was done and over for that week, he had the sensation of satisfaction in duty accomplished which a man feels who has faced an east wind for several hours without loss of optimism, and returned home with a double appreciation of his own pleasant library and bright fire. One's life should not be too personal,too easy; there should be a calm consideration of public events, a general knowledge of the outside world—though that outside world, tending as it did at present too much towards mere utilitarian interests, was not especially interesting; thus spoke the Major at the receptions (with that week'sSaturdayfresh in his memory), as he alluded briefly to the European news. For they never discussed American news at the receptions; they never came farther westward, conversationally, than longitude twenty-five, reckoned, of course, from Greenwich. In 1868 there was a good deal of this polite oblivion south of the Potomac and Cumberland.
When, therefore, Mr. Owen happened to call at a time when Madam Carroll was engaged, Miss Carroll was obliged to receive him. She did not dislike him (which was fortunate; she disliked so many people!), but she did not care to see him so often, she said. He talked well, she was aware of that; he had gone over the entire field of general subjects with the hope, as it seemed, of finding one in which she might be interested. But as she was interested in nothing but her father, and would not talk of him now, save conventionally, with any one, he found her rather unresponsive.
His congregation thought her, in addition, cold. Not a few of them had mentioned to him this opinion.But there was something in Sara Carroll's face which seemed to Owen the reverse of cold, though he could not deny that to him personally she was, if not precisely wintry, at least as neutral as a late October day, when there is neither sun to warm nor wind to vivify the gray, still air. Yet he continued to come to the Farms. His liking for the little mistress of the house was strong and sincere. He thought her very sweet and winning. He found there, too, an atmosphere in which he did not have to mount guard over himself and his possessions—an atmosphere of pleasant welcome and pleasant words, but both of them unaccompanied by what might have been called, perhaps, the acquisitiveness which prevailed elsewhere. No one at the Farms wanted him or anything that was his, that is, wanted it with any tenacity; his time, his thoughts, his opinions, his approval or disapproval, his ideas, his advice, his personal sympathy, his especial daily guidance, his mornings, his evenings, his afternoons, his favorite books, his sermons in manuscript—all these were considered his own property, and were not asked for in the large, low-ceilinged drawing-room where the Major's wife and daughter, one or both, received him when he came. They received him as an equal (Miss Carroll as a not especially important one), and not as a superior, a being from another world; though MadamCarroll always put enough respect for his rector's position into her manner to make him feel easy about himself and about coming again.
He continued to come again. And Miss Carroll continued her neutral manner. The only change, the only expression of feeling which he had seen in her in all these weeks, was one look in her eyes and a sentence or two she had uttered, brought out by something he said about her mother. During one of their first interviews he had spoken of this lady, expressing, respectfully, his great liking for her, his admiration. Madame Carroll's daughter had responded briefly, and rather as though she thought it unnecessary for him to have an opinion, and more than unnecessary to express one. He had remembered this little passage of arms, and had said no more. But having met the mistress of the house a few days before, at a cabin on the outskirts of the town, where a poor crippled boy had just breathed his last breath of pain, he had been much touched by the sweet, comprehending, sisterly tenderness of the mother who was a lady to the mother who was so ignorant, rough-spoken, almost rough-hearted as well. But, though rough-hearted, she had loved her poor child as dearly as that other mother loved her little Scar. The other mother had herself said this to him as they left the cabin together. He spoke of it toSara when he made his next visit at the Farms; he could not help it.
And then a humility he had never seen there before came into her eyes, and a warmth of tone he had not heard before into her voice.
"My mother's goodness is simply unparalleled," she answered. "You admire her sincerely; many do. But no one save those who are in the house with her all the time can comprehend the one hundredth part of her unselfishness, her energy—which is always so quiet—her tenderness for others, her constant thought for them."
Frederick Owen was surprised at the pleasure these words gave him. For they gave him a great pleasure. He felt himself in a glow as she finished. He thought of this as he walked home. He knew that he admired Madame Carroll; and he was not without a very pleasant belief, too, that she had a respect for his opinion, and even an especial respect. Still, did he care so much to hear her praised?—care so much that it put him in a glow?
Towards the last of August occurred, on its regular day, one of Madame Carroll's receptions. To Sara Carroll it was an unusually disagreeable one. She had never been fond of the receptions at any time, though of late she had accepted them because they were so much to her father; but this particular one was odious.
It was odious on account of the presence of a stranger who had appeared in Far Edgerley three weeks before, a stranger who had made his way into society there with so much rapidity and success that he had now penetrated even the exclusive barriers of the Farms. But this phraseology was Miss Carroll's. In reality, the stranger's "way" had not been made by any effort of his own, but rather by his manners and appearance, which were original, and more especially by a gift for which nature was responsible, not himself. And as to "penetrating the barriers" of the Farms, he had not shown any especial interest in that old-fashioned mansion, and now that he was actually there, and at one of the receptions, too, he seemed not impressed by his good fortune, but wandered about rather restlessly, and yawned a good deal in corners. These little ways of his, however, were considered to belong to the "fantasies of genius;" Madam Carroll herself had so characterized them.
The stranger had, indeed, unlimited genius, if signs of this kind were to be taken as evidences of it; he interrupted people in the middle of their sentences; he left them abruptly while they were still talking to him; he yawned (as has already been mentioned), and not always in corners; he went to see the persons he fancied, whether they had asked him to doso or not; he never dreamed of going to see the persons he did not fancy, no matter how many times they had invited him. He had a liking for flower-gardens, and had been discovered more than once, soon after his arrival, sitting in honeysuckle arbors which the owners had supposed were for their own private enjoyment. When found, he had not apologized; he had complimented the owners upon their honeysuckles.
Strangers were so rare in Far Edgerley—high, ancient little village in the mountains, far from railways, unmentioned in guide-books—that this admirer of flower-gardens was known by sight through all the town before he had been two days in the place. He was named Dupont, and he was staying at the village inn, the Washington Hotel—an old red brick structure, whose sign, a weather-beaten portrait of the Father of his Country, crowned the top of a thick blue pole set out in the middle of Edgerley Street. He was apparently about twenty-eight or thirty years of age, tall, slender, carelessly dressed, yet possessing, too, some picturesque articles of attire to which Far Edgerley was not accustomed; notably, low shoes with red silk stockings above them, and a red silk handkerchief to match the stockings peeping from the breast pocket of the coat; a cream-colored umbrella lined with red silk; a quantityof cream-colored gauze wound round a straw hat.
But it was not these articles, remarkable as they were, nor his taste for opening gates without permission, nor his habit of walking in the middle of the street, ignoring sidewalks, nor another habit he had of rising and going out of church just before the sermon—it was none of these which had given him his privilege of entering "the best society." The best society had opened its doors to Genius, and to Genius alone. This genius was of the musical kind. Dupont played and sang his own compositions. "What," said Madam Carroll, "is genius, if not this?"
Madam Carroll's opinion was followed in Far Edgerley, and Dupont now had the benefit of it. The Rendleshams invited him to tea; the Greers sang for him; he was offered theSaturday Review; even Mrs. General Hibbard, joining the gentle tide, invited him to Chapultepec, and when he came, showed him the duck yard. Miss Honoria Ashley did not yield to the current. But then Miss Honoria never yielded to anything. Her father, the junior warden, freely announced (outside his own gate) that the "singing man" amused him. Mr. Phipps hated him, but that was because Dupont had shown some interest in Miss Lucy Rendlesham, who was pretty. Not that they cared much, however, for beauty inFar Edgerley; it was so much better to be intellectual. Ferdinand Kenneway, when he learned that the new-comer had been received both at Chapultepec and the Farms, called at the inn, and left one of his engraved cards—"Mr. F. Kenneway, Baltimore." He had once lived in Baltimore six months. Dupont made an excellent caricature of Ferdinand on the back of the card, and never returned the call. On the whole, the musician had reason to congratulate himself upon so complete a conquest of Far Edgerley's highest circle. Only two persons (besides Phipps) in all that circle disliked him. True, these two disliked him strongly; but they remained only two, and they were, in public, at least, silent. They were Miss Carroll and the rector of St. John's.
Perhaps it was but natural that a clergyman should look askance at a man who always rose and walked out of church at the very moment when he was preparing to begin his sermon. Miss Carroll, however, had no such sufficient reason to give for her dislike; when Dupont came to the Farms he was as respectfully polite to her as he could be in the very small opportunity she vouchsafed him. He came often to their flower-garden. She complained of his constant presence. "I am never sure that he is not there. He is either lying at full length in the shadeof the rhododendrons, or else sitting in the rose arbor, drumming on the table."
"Very harmless amusements they seem to me," replied Madam Carroll.
"Yes. But why should we be compelled to provide his amusements? I think that office we might decline."
"You are rather unkind, aren't you? What harm has the poor fellow done to us?"
"Oh, if you are going to pity him, mamma—"
"Why should not one pity him a little?—a young man who is so alone in the world, as he tells us he is, not strong in health, and often moody. Then, too, there is his genius."
"I am tired of his genius. I do not believe in his genius. There is no power in it. Always a 'little song!' A 'little song!' His little songs are too sweet; they have no force."
"Do you wish him to shout?"
"I wish him to take himself elsewhere. I am speaking freely, mamma; for I have noticed that you seem to like him."
"He is a variety—that is the explanation; we have so little variety here. But I do like him, Sara, or, rather, I like his songs. To me they are very beautiful."
"HE CAME OFTEN TO THEIR FLOWER GARDEN.""HE CAME OFTEN TO THEIR FLOWER GARDEN."
Nothing more was said on either side. Sara hadannounced her dislike, and it had been ignored; her regard for Madam Carroll kept her from again expressing the feeling.
The present reception was considered an especially delightful one. One reason for this was that Madam Carroll had altered her hours; instead of from five to eight, they were now from eight to ten. True, the time was shorter; but this was compensated for by the change from afternoon to evening. For choice as had been the tone of elegant culture which had underlain these social meetings heretofore, there was no doubt but that they gained in the element of gayety by being deferred to candle-light. The candles inspired everybody; it was felt to be more festal. The ladies wore flowers in their hair, and Ferdinand Kenneway came out in white gloves. The Major, too, had not appeared so well all summer as he did this evening; every one remarked it. Not that the Major did not always appear well. "He is, and always has been, the first gentleman of our state. But to-night, how peculiarly distinguished he looks! His gray hair but adds to his noble appearance—don't you think so?—his gray hair and his wounded arm? And dear Madam Carroll, too, when have you seen her look so bright?"
Thus the ladies. But the daughter of the house, meanwhile, had never been more silent. To-nightshe merited, without doubt, their adjective "cold." She had not been able to be of much use to her father this evening. During the three quarters of an hour he had given to his guests Madam Carroll had not left him; together they had gone through the rooms, exchanging greetings, holding short conversations, inquiring after the health of the absent. As had been remarked, the little wife looked very bright. She had more color than usual; her complexion had never had, they said, a more exquisite bloom. She was dressed in white, with a large bunch of pink roses fastened in her belt, and as she stood by the side of her tall, gray-haired husband she looked, the junior warden declared, like "a Hebe." And then he carefully explained that he meant an American Hebe of delicate outlines, and not the Hebe of the ancient Greeks—"who always weighed two hundred."
The American Hebe talked with much animation; Far Edgerley admired her more than ever. After the Major had retired she was even gay; the junior warden having lost the spray of sweet-pea from his button-hole, with charming sportiveness she called him to her and replaced it with one of her pink roses.
Meanwhile Mr. Dupont was conducting himself after his usual fantasied fashion. He strolled aboutand leaned against the walls—a thing never done in Far Edgerley, on account of the paper; he stared at the head-dress of Mrs. General Hibbard, an impressive edifice of black lace and bugles; he talked a little to Miss Lucy Rendlesham, to the rage of Phipps; he turned his back on F. Kenneway; and he laughed at the poetical quotations of Mrs. Greer. And then he made no less than six profound bows before Miss Corinna, the dignified leader of St. John's choir.
He bowed whenever he met her, stopping especially for the purpose, drawing his feet together, and bending his head and body to an angle heretofore unwitnessed in that community. Miss Corinna, in chaste black silk, became at last, martial though she was, disconcerted by this extreme respect. She could not return it properly, because, most unfortunately, as she had always thought, the days of the courtesy, the only stately salutation for a lady, were gone by. She bowed as majestically as she could. But when it came to the seventh time, she said to her second sister, "Really, Camilla, his attentions are becoming too pressing. Let us retire." So they retired—to the wall. But even here they were not secure, Dupont discovering their retreat, and coming by expressly every now and then to bestow upon the stately maiden another salute.
Towards the end of the evening—or rather, of thereception—he sang, accompanying himself upon the guitar. His guitar had a long loop of red ribbon attached to it; Miss Carroll surveyed it and its owner with coldest eye, as, seated upon a low ottoman in the centre of the room, he began what she had called his "little songs." His songs were, in truth, always brief; but they were not entirely valueless, in spite of her prejudice against them. They had a character of their own. Sometimes they contained minor strains too old for Far Edgerley to remember, the wild, soft, plaintive cadences of the Indian women of tribes long gone towards the setting sun, of the first African slaves poling their flatboats along the Southern rivers. And sometimes they were love-songs, of a style far too modern for the little, old-fashioned town to comprehend. Dupont's voice was a tenor, not powerful, but deliciously, sensuously sweet. As he sat there singing, with his large, bold dark eyes roving about the room, with his slender dark fingers touching the strings, with his black moustache, waxed at the ends, the gleam of his red handkerchief, and the red flower in his coat, he seemed to some of the ladies present romantically handsome. To Sara Carroll he seemed a living impertinence.
What right had this person of unknown antecedents, position, and character to be posturing therebefore them?—to be admitted at all to the house of her father? And then her eyes happened to fall upon her father's wife, who, in the chair nearest the musician, was listening to him with noticeable enjoyment. She turned and left the room.
By doing this she came directly upon Frederick Owen, who had apparently performed the same action a little while before. They were alone in the wide hall; every one else was in the drawing-room, gathered round the singer.
"It—it was cooler here," Owen explained, rather awkwardly. At this instant Dupont's voice floated out to them in one of his long, soft notes. "It has 'a dying fall,' has it not?" said the clergyman; he was trying to speak politely of her guest. But as his eyes met those of Miss Carroll, he suddenly read in them a feeling of the same strength and nature as his own, regarding that guest. This was a surprise, and a satisfaction. It was the first corresponding dislike he had been able to discover. For his own dislike had been so strong that he had been searching in all directions for a corresponding one, with the hope, perhaps, of proving to himself that his was not mere baseless prejudice. But until this evening he had not succeeded in finding what he sought. It was all the other way.
It should be mentioned here that Owen had notbetrayed this dislike of his. If he had done so, if his objection to the musician had been known, or even suspected, it is probable that Dupont would hardly have attained his present position in Far Edgerley. For after Madam Carroll's opinion, the opinion of the rector of St. John's came next. But he had not betrayed it. There was nothing of essential importance against Dupont. The fact that he was precisely the kind of fellow whom Frederick Owen particularly disliked was simply a matter between the two men themselves, or rather, as Dupont cared nothing about it, between Owen and his own conscience; for he could hardly go about denouncing a man because he happened to play the guitar. But after three weeks of enduring him—for he met him wherever he went—it was great comfort to have caught that gleam of contempt in Miss Carroll's fair gray eyes; he was glad that he had been at just the right spot in the hall to receive it as she came from the drawing-room with that alluring voice floating forth behind her.
"It is a beautiful evening," he said, dropping the subject of the musician; "the moonlight is so bright that one can see all the mountains. Shall we go out and look at them?"
And Miss Carroll was so displeased with the scene within that she consented to withdraw to the scenewithout; and there they remained as long as the singing lasted. They walked up and down the broad piazza; he talked about the mountain scenery, and the waterfalls. She did not appear to be much interested in them. Her companion, however, was not so much chilled by this manner of hers as he had sometimes been; he had had a glimpse behind it.
EARLYin the week following the reception, Frederick Owen learned that Dupont was about to take his departure from Far Edgerley, and with no expectation of returning. This was good news. He was beginning to have the feeling that the fellow would never go away, that he and his guitar would become a permanent feature of Madam Carroll's receptions, his lounging figure under the cream-colored umbrella a daily ornament of the centre of Edgerley Street. Was he really, then, going? It seemed too good to be true. But the tidings had been brought by Miss Dalley, who was both good and true, and who was accurate as well; she had the very hour—"On Friday, at nine."
"Hangman's day!" thought Owen, with satisfaction, doing his thinking this time with the remnants of boyhood feelings; for though he was in his third decade—the beginning of it—and a clergyman, the boy in him was by no means entirely outgrown. Miss Dalley had come to return a book, Longfellow's"Outre Mer," and to borrow anything he might have about Ferrara.
"I was so much interested in our American poet's description of the Italian poet's grave, on the Janiculum," she said. "It was such a touching passage, and it contained this truly poetical sentence: 'He sleeps midway between his cradle at Sorrento and his dungeon at Ferrara.' I can never go inperson, Mr. Owen; Fate has denied me that. But I can think of the inscription, which Longfellow gives: 'Torquati Tasso ossa hic jacet,' and be there inmind."
She had called it "hic jacket." "Jacent, I think," said the rector, gently.
"Yes, certainly; that is what I meant—jacinth," said Miss Dalley, correcting herself. "A beautiful word, is it not? And so appropriate, too, for a poet's grave, mentioned, as it is, in Revelations!"
On Friday Dupont really did go. The rector himself saw him pass in the high red wagon of the Washington Inn on his way down the mountain to the lower town, the eastward-bound stage, and thence—wherever he pleased, the gazer thought, so long as he did not return. But although the rector gave this vagueness to the musician's destination, it was understood in other quarters that he was going back to the West India Islands—"where he used to live, you know."
"Upon which one did he live?" asked the junior warden. "There are about fifty thousand of them, large and small; he can't have lived on them all."
"For my part, I think himquitecapable of it," answered Miss Honoria, grimly.
Having seen the musician depart, Owen jumped on his horse and went off to one of his mission stations far up among the crags of Lonely Mountain. For, not content with a rector's usual duties, all of which he attended to with a modern promptness unknown in the days of good old Parson Montgomery, he had established mission stations at various points in the mountains above Far Edgerley. Wherever there were a few log-houses gathered together, there he held services, or started a Sunday-school. He was by far the most energetic rector the parish of St. John in the Wilderness had ever had; so much so, indeed, that the parish hardly knew how to take his energy, and thought that he was perhaps rather too much in the wilderness—more than necessity demanded or his bishop required. Miss Honoria Ashley had even called these journeyings of his "itinerant;" but Miss Honoria was known to disapprove, on general principles, of everything the rector did: she had once seen him wearing a sack-coat.
On this particular Friday he was out all day among the peaks, close up under the sky. Coming down atsunset, and entering Edgerley Street, with its knolls and flower-gardens and rambling old houses, his home seemed to him a peaceful and pleasant one. And then, as he passed Carroll Farms, he became conscious that the cause for its seeming especially peaceful to him this evening was the absence of the intruder, that man from another world, who was no longer there to contaminate its sweet, old-fashioned simplicity with his dubious beauty, his dangerous character, and his enchanting voice. For Owen believed that the musician's character was dangerous; his face bore the marks of dissipation, and though indolent, and often full of gay good-nature, he had at times a reckless expression in his eyes. Nothing deterred him from amusing himself; and probably, in the same way, nothing would deter him from any course towards which he should happen to feel an inclination. He was not dangerous by plan or calculation; he was dangerous from the very lack of them. He was essentially erratic, and followed his fancies, and no one could tell whither they would lead him. But he might have been all this, and the clergyman would still have felt able to guard his parish and people from any harm his presence might do them, had it not been for the favor shown him by Madam Carroll. This had been a blow to Owen. He said to himself that the gentle lady's love ofmusic had blinded her judgment, and carried her astray. It was a satisfaction that Miss Carroll's judgment remained unblinded. But it was greatest satisfaction of all that the man was gone; he congratulated himself upon this anew as he rode by the gateway of the Farms.
It was well that he had this taste of comfort. It did not last long. Less than three weeks had passed when he learned one afternoon that Dupont had returned. And not long afterwards he was in possession of other knowledge, which troubled him more than anything that had happened since he came to Far Edgerley.
In the meantime his parish, unaware of its rector's opinion, had welcomed back the summer visitor with various graceful little attentions. The summer visitor had been seriously ill, and needed attentions, graceful or otherwise. He had journeyed as far as New York, and there had fallen ill of a fever, which was not surprising, the parish thought, when one considered the dangerously torrid climate of that business metropolis at this season. Upon recovery, he had longed with a great longing for "our pure Chillawassee air," and had returned to pass the time of convalescence "among our noble peaks;" this was repeated from knoll to knoll. Dupont's appearance bore testimony to the truth of the tale. Hehad evidently been ill: his cheeks were hollow, and he moved about slowly, as though he had not much strength; his eyes, large and dark, looked larger and darker than ever, set in his thin, brown face. But he was still Dupont; his moustache was still waxed, and he had some new articles of finery, a gold watch-chain, and a seal-ring on his long-fingered hand. This time he did not stay at the inn; he preferred to try a farm-house, and selected Walley's Cove, a small farm a little above the village, in one of the high ravines which, when wide enough for a few fields along the mountain-brook that flowed through the centre, were called coves. Dupont liked the place on account of the view; and also, he said, because he could throw a stone from the cove's mouth "into every chimney in Far Edgerley." This was repeated. "Do you suppose," said Mrs. General Hibbard, solemnly—"do you suppose he is going to do it?"
This lady had felt from the beginning a solemn curiosity about Dupont, about all he said and did. But this was quite natural, the village thought, when one considered the interesting proximity of the West India Islands (where the musician used to live) to the glorious Mexican field of her departed husband's fame. But, in return for her interest, Dupont had irreverently made a caricature of the august widow,depicting her as a mermaid, in her own duck-pond, surrounded by all her ducks, clad in Mexican costumes; and then Far Edgerley society, which had been obliged to listen for eight long years to many details about these birds of Chapultepec—Far Edgerley society was corrupt enough to laugh.
But this incident belonged to Dupont's first visit; and, like other incidents of his first visit, could be deemed amusing or impertinent according to one's view of him. The new knowledge which had come to Frederick Owen was something very different—different and grave: Sara Carroll had changed. She now felt an interest in this stranger, and she was showing it.
Was this the influence of Madam Carroll? But Owen could not long think this. Miss Carroll was not a person to be easily influenced or led. She was not yielding; whatever course she might follow, one could at least be sure that, good or bad, it was her own. Her interest showed itself guardedly; so much so that no one had observed it. The clergyman felt sure that he was the only discoverer, and his own discovery he owed to a rare chance. He was coming down Chillawassee on horseback, and in bending to gather a flower from a bush, as he passed, he had lost a small note-book from the breast pocket of his coat; dismounting to look for it, hefound that it was lying on a ledge not far below the road, and that he could get it by a little climbing. He made his way down to the ledge, and secured the book. Then he saw, a little farther down, one of the isolated rocks called chimneys, and was seized with the fancy to have a look from its top. He obeyed this fancy. And from its top he found himself looking directly down into a small field on the edge of Carroll Farms; here, standing together under a tree, were two figures which he instantly recognized—they were the figures of Sara Carroll and Dupont. This field was separated from the road by a hedge so high that no one could look over it, and from the other fields and the orchard of the Farms by a thicket of chincapins. The two were therefore well hidden; they were safe from discovery save for the remote chance that some one had climbed the chimney above them. And this one remote chance had fallen to the lot of Frederick Owen.
He was much surprised, uncertain, unhappy. Shielded by the tall bushes growing on top of the chimney, he had stood for several minutes looking down upon the two. Then he left the rock, went back to his horse, and rode home.
His uneasiness, after spoiling his night's sleep, took him to the Farms the next afternoon. Madam Carroll received him in the drawing-room. Sheoffered an excuse for Miss Carroll; it seemed that she had a headache. But on his way out the clergyman distinctly saw the shadow of a man thrown across the dining-room floor by the bright sunshine shining through the western windows. It might not be the shadow of Dupont, of course; he was ashamed of himself for his quick suspicion. It might be that of some other visitor, or of one of their poor pensioners, or of Caleb Inches. But no masculine visitor came to the Farms at this hour save, now and then, the junior warden, whose small figure never cast shadow like that; and all the pensioners of whom he had knowledge were women. He decided that, of course, it was Inches; and then, on his way down Carroll Lane, he met Inches coming up. Still, it was but a supposition. He forced himself to cast it aside.
Chance, however, seemed determined to disturb him, for she soon threw in his way other knowledge, and this not a shadow, but reality. He caught a glimpse of Sara Carroll turning into a little-used path, which led up the mountain to a fir-wood. His own road (he was on horseback, as usual, on his way to a mission station) led him by Walley's Cove, and here, fifteen minutes later, he distinctly saw the figure of Louis Dupont entering the same wood at its upper edge, and by the path which would bring himdirectly to her, the same path she herself was following.
Owen's trouble now took complete possession of him; up to this time he had fought it off. He felt that he ought to do something, to act. Dupont was a dissipated, erratic adventurer, whose history no one knew. Should he let this proud, fastidious, delicate-minded girl fall into such a vulgar trap as this? Before his eyes, within reach of his hand? Yet there it was again—if she were in reality as proud and fastidious as he had supposed her to be (and he had thought her the proudest girl he had ever known), how could she, of her own accord, endure Louis Dupont? At one time she had not endured him. There had been a memorable moment when the expression of her eyes (how well he remembered it!) had been unmistakable; the moment when he had met her, coming from the drawing-room, with that alluring voice floating forth behind her. What could have changed her—changed her so completely as this?
The one answer presented itself with pitiless promptness: Dupont had changed her. He had accomplished it himself, with the aid of a handsome face, fine eyes, and an audacity which stopped at nothing; for the clergyman had always felt sure that the audacity was there, although it had not, inFar Edgerley, at least, been much exerted. This was so acutely disagreeable to the man who was thinking of it, that there was in his own eyes (handsome ones, too, in their way—a blue way) angry moisture as he went over its possibilities. He clinched his hand and rode on; it would have fared hardly with the musician had he crossed his path just then. Owen was a clergyman. But he had been a man, and a free one, first; he had not gone from college and seminary directly into the ministry. He was thirty-one years old, and he had taken orders but two years before; the preceding interval had not been spent in country villages.
With all this surging feeling, however, he had as yet nothing definite against this stranger—this stranger whose bad manners had been protected by his "genius," and whose bad aspects had not been perceived by the innocent little town. By nothing definite he meant nothing that he could use. But now Chance, having given him three heavy burdens of knowledge to carry (he had carried them as well as he could, with a heavy heart as well)—the knowledge of those three meetings which, if not clandestine, were at least concealed—this same Chance relented so far as to present him with other knowledge—knowledge of a different hue. She put in his possession some recent facts concerning the musicianwhich were proof, and proof positive, against him.
But what could Owen do with his facts? If he had not known what he knew of Sara Carroll's interest in him, he could have proceeded against the fellow at once; it needed but the statement which he was now able to make to close every door in Far Edgerley against him, for the little town, though not strait-laced, had a standard of morals as pure as its own air. But if he should do this, might not Dupont take his revenge, or, less than that, amuse himself, as he would call it, by letting the village public learn of his intimate relations with the Farms, or rather with Miss Carroll? Madam Carroll's liking for him, or, rather, for his songs, was known and comprehended. But Miss Carroll's liking was not known; and it had, too, an aspect—and here Frederick Owen felt that he would rather go on forever in silence than have that aspect discussed. Yet something he must do. He decided to go to Major Carroll himself. Infirm as was his health, and secluded as was his life, he was the natural protector of these two ladies, and would wish to know, ought to know, everything that concerned them. He went to the Farms.