"Love is hurt with jar and fret,Love is made a vague regret,Eyes with idle tears are wet,Idle habit links us yet—What is love? for we forget;Ah! no, no!"TENNYSON.
My bright eyed maid had something evidently on her mind the next morning, as stealing early to my bedside, she found me awake and quite ready for her services. I caught sight of her perplexed face in the glass, as she dressed my hair, and said at last, "What are you thinking about, Kitty, has anything happened?"
"Happened? Oh, no, Miss," she said, blushing, and a little confused. "I was only thinking—I was only wondering"——
"Well, Kitty?"
"I mean that—that is—are you very fond of Miss Churchill?"
I laughed and blushed a little in my turn, and said:
"Why no, not particularly, I think."
"BecauseIthink she's a very haughty lady, for my part; and if I am any judge, her maid, Frances, is a much-put-upon young woman, that's all."
"What has led you to that conclusion so soon?" I asked, with a smile.
"Oh! nothing particular, ma'am, only some of Miss Churchill's ruffled morning dresses got crushed in the packing, and Frances was in the laundry till after twelve o'clock last night, fluting 'em over; and I've noticed, Frances starts and flusters when her lady's bell rings, as if there were a scolding for her at the other end of the wire, that's all."
"Oh, that's a trifle! Frances is nervous," I said, apologetically. "What did my aunt say when you told her my message last night?"
"Nothing but 'very well,' and 'I am sorry to hear it.' There wasn't time for any more, for the gentleman they call Captain, with the big moustache, came up for her to play whist, and she went away with him. But," said Kitty, hesitatingly, and looking at me very sharply, "I don't know whether I ought to tell you, but there was a gentleman who didn't seem to take it quite so coolly as Mrs. Churchill did."
"Who, pray?" I asked, as the blood started to my cheeks.
"The young French gentleman, Miss; I think they call him Mr."——
"Oh, Mr. Viennet!"
"I wonder, Miss, why you say 'Oh, Mr. Viennet!' as if you were disappointed," said Kitty, quite nettled. "I'm sure he's the handsomest gentleman among 'em; and if you could have seen him, when he followed me up the stairs, and asked about you, I am sure you'd think better of it; and he's got the handsomest eyes! I can't think why you don't like him."
"I have not said I did not; and besides, Kitty," I continued, gravely, "it's not right for you to talk to the gentlemen; you must be careful."
"I know, Miss; but who could help talking to such a nice gentleman, just answering his questions? I'm sure he could get round Mrs. Roberts herself, if he tried! let alone people that ain't made of stone or leather. And," continued Kitty, "isn't it odd, Miss, but all the time he was talking to me, I couldn't help wondering where I'd seen him before? I know for a certainty, that he's never been within forty miles of Rutledge till now, and I've never been twenty miles away from it; and yet, for my life, I couldn't get it out of my head, that some where or other I'd seen him before!"
"It's a very foolish idea to have in your head, Kitty, and a very improbable one at the best; so I wouldn't trouble myself any further about it, if I were you."
I did not mention it to Kitty, but I could not help being struck with the similarity of my own impressions on first meeting Victor Viennet. It was the vaguest, mistiest chain of reminiscence that his face seemed to stir, but till I had seen him several times, it continued to perplex me. I could not account for it in any way; but the association or recollection, or whatever it was, had faded before a closer acquaintance; and now Victor Viennet's handsome face suggested Victor Viennet, and nobody or nothing more.
"These will match your lilac muslin exactly, Miss," said Kitty, offering me a handful of purple "morning glories." "I ran out to get you some flowers before I came in to wake you, but I was in such a hurry, that I couldn't go as far as the garden, and so just picked these out of the hedge."
I thanked her as I fastened them in my dress; they looked lovely with the dew still shining on them. It was yet a good while to breakfast, but I turned to go downstairs, accepting, with a smile at the newness of such services, the dainty handkerchief that Kitty shook out for me.
The fresh morning breeze swept softly through the wide hall as I descended the stairs. Summer had come in and taken the gloomy old place by storm. A pyramid of flowers stood on the dark oak table in the centre, a mocking-bird in its gay cage hung at one end, and over the cold marble pavement the sunshine was creeping fast. The house was so quiet, that I could almost fancy I was alone in it, and crossing the hall, I went up to the library door; but a cowardly irresolution made me turn away, and pass on to the north door of the hall, which, as well as the front one, stood wide open. The broad fields stretched far away June-like and lovely in the sunshine; the hedges and trees were in such luxuriant leaf, that they quite hid the stables and outhouses on the left that last fall had been so prominent in the landscape. Looking from the parlor windows, there was the same view of the lake that I had from my room. The mists were rolling up from its fair bosom, and the foliage that crowned its banks was of the freshest and glossiest green. The dew was glittering on the lawn, early birds twittered and sang in the branches overhead, and on the breeze came the rich perfume of the roses that climbed from pillar to pillar of the piazza. Rutledge had fulfilled my anticipations; in my weary, longing day-dreams, I had never pictured anything fairer than this.
It was with a half-defined feeling of curiosity that I wandered through the large parlors, furnished in an odd mixture of old-fashioned splendor and modern elegance. It wasterra incognitato me; I had never entered these rooms before. I could hardly understand how the sunshine and fresh air came to be so much at home in them, as it seemed they now were. It was difficult to believe that these finely furnished, habitable looking apartments, had been closed and unused for twenty years and more. They had been thoroughly revised, no doubt, and the past put to the rout; but they were strange and unattractive to me, and I turned again to the library. Listening at the door before I pushed it open, I entered noiselessly. There was no need of so much caution; this room was as untenanted as its neighbors, save by thronging memories and torturing regrets, and they entered with me.
Here at least there was no change; the wide casements were open to the morning, but the white north light seemed subdued and cold after the sunshine of the other rooms, and the dark panelling and frowning moldings looked a defiance at the intruding summer. I liked it better so; there had been change enough without this last stronghold of memory being invaded.
Every article of furniture in the room—the table, with its pile of papers at one end and books at the other, the familiar paper-cutter lying by the unopened review, the heavy bronze inkstand, the graceful lamp, the chair, pushed back half a yard from the table—minded me of the happy hours that it would have been wiser to forget. One of the bookcases stood open, and a book lay on the table as if recently read, and a card marked the reader's place. I took it up involuntarily. It was Sintram, and the words swam before me as I bent over its familiar pages. On the card that had served for a mark, were written a few lines in a well known hand; and as I raised my eyes from them to the window, I saw Mr. Rutledge himself approaching the house from the direction of the stables. With a hurried movement I slipped the card in my pocket, and finding nothing else to replace it with, pulled one of the flowers from my bosom, and hastily shutting it between the leaves, threw the book on the table, and ran into the hall. If I had been a fugitive from justice, I could not have had a more guilty feeling than that which now impelled me to escape from meeting Mr. Rutledge. But there was no time to get upstairs; he would see me from the piazza if I went into the parlor; and while I stood in the hall, trembling with eagerness, and alarm, and irresolution, my retreat was cut off by the sudden appearance of Victor descending the stairs, who with an exclamation of pleasure, hurried toward me, and taking my hand was bowing over it in most devout fashion, when Mr. Rutledge entered the hall. Victor looked a little confused, and paused in the midst of an elegant French speech, while the quick crimson dyed my cheeks, all of which Mr. Rutledge appeared to ignore, as, approaching us, he said good morning with his usual courtesy of manner, expressed his pleasure in the improvement apparent in my looks, and then to Victor his astonishment at finding him a person of such early habits.
"Pray do not give me any credit for getting up this morning," said Victor with a hasty wave of the hand. "I assure you I detest early rising with my whole French soul, and haven't seen a sun younger than three hours old since I can remember; but, my dear sir, with all homage to the most comfortable of beds, and the pleasantest room I ever occupied in my life, I never passed such a night! When at last I slept, my dreams were so frightful that I was thankful to wake, and would have resorted to any means to have kept myself awake, if there had been the slightest danger of my closing my eyes again."
"What room did you occupy?" I asked.
"The corner room at the north end of the hall, it is, I think."
"It is most unfortunate," said Mr. Rutledge, looking a little annoyed. "Are you subject to wakeful nights?"
"Never remember such an occurrence before," he returned. "I have enjoyed the plebeian luxury of sound sleep all my life, and so am more at a loss to account for my experience of last night."
"Were you disturbed by any noise—conscious of any one moving in the house?"
"No, the house was silent, silent as death!Ma foi!I believe that was the worst of it. If I were superstitious, I should tell you of the only thing that interrupted it; but I know how credulous and absurd it would sound to dispassionate judges, and how I should ridicule anything of the kind in another person; but this strange nightmare has taken such possession of me, I cannot shake it off."
His face expressed intense feeling as he spoke, and the usual levity of his manner was quite gone.
"What was it?" I said earnestly, and Mr. Rutledge looked indeed so far from ridiculing his emotion, that Victor went on rapidly:
"You will think me a person of imaginative and excitable temperament, but I must assure you to the contrary, and that I never before yielded to a superstitious fancy, and have always held in great contempt all who were influenced by such follies. Will you believe me then, when I tell you that last night I was startled violently from my sleep, by a voice that sounded, from its hollowness and ghastliness, as if it came from the fleshless jaws of a skeleton, calling again and again, in tones that made my blood curdle, a familiar name, and one that at any time, I cannot hear without emotion. Sleep had nothing to do with it! I was as wide awake as I am now. But pshaw!" he exclaimed, suddenly turning, "I shall forget all about it in an hour, and I beg you'll do the same," and not giving either of us time to answer, he went on in an altered tone: "Mr. Rutledge, what a fine place you have! I have been admiring the view from my window. Have you purchased it recently? I don't remember to have seen a finer estate in America."
"It is a valuable and well located farm," answered Mr. Rutledge, rather indifferently; "but farming is not my specialty, and I never should have encumbered myself voluntarily with such a care, if it had not devolved upon me by inheritance."
"Ah!" said Victor with a slight accent of irony, that from last night's conversation I was prepared for; "It was then a case of greatness thrust, etc. But sir, it must add a great charm to this already charming home, to think that it has been the birth-place and family altar, as it were, of generations of your ancestors? Surely you are not insensible to such sentiments of pride and affection."
"Associations of that kind, of course, invest a place with a certain kind of interest; but I cannot lay claim to as much feeling on the subject as perhaps would be becoming. Like you, sir," he said, with a bow, "I have a dread of claiming credit for habits and feelings that I do not possess and entertain."
Victor looked a little annoyed that he had not succeeded in drawing out Mr. Rutledge's aristocratic and overbearing sentiments, and he would not have given up the subject, had not Mr. Rutledge, with a firm and quiet hand, put it aside, and led the way to other topics.
"How is it," he said to me, "that you have not noticed your small friend Tigre? He has been at your feet for the last five minutes, looking most wistfully for a kind word."
I started in confusion and surprise, and stooping down, covered the dog with caresses. The poor little rascal was frantic with delight, springing up to my face, and ejaculating his welcome in short barks and low whines, tearing around me, and then running off a little distance and looking back enthusiastically.
"He is evidently inviting you to another steeple-chase," said Mr. Rutledge.
I blushed violently at the recollection, and wished Tigre anywhere but where he was.
"Have you lost your interest in the turf, since your season in town, or have other interests and tastes developed themselves while it has lain dormant?"
"Other tastes have developed themselves, I believe," I answered.
"Break it gently to Tigre, I beg you then, for I am sure he has been living all winter on the hope of another romp. He does not appreciate the lapse of time, and the changes involved, so readily as his betters, you know."
"He has, at least, the grace to receive them more kindly," I returned, stooping to pat him. "Tigre, if I am too old to run races, I am not debarred as yet from taking walks, I believe, and I would propose that we indulge in one. Mr. Viennet, are you too old to be of the party?"
Mr. Rutledge turned shortly toward the library, Victor and I passed out on the piazza, and, with Tigre in close attendance, descended the broad steps to the terrace.
Breakfast was nearly completed when we returned, and the party at the table looked up in amazement as we entered the room.
"I should admire to know," exclaimed Ella Wynkar, who affected Boston manners, and "admired" a good deal, "I should admire to know where you two have been! Mr. Arbuthnot declares that Mr. Viennet has been up since daybreak; and as foryou," she said, turning to me, "I heard your door shut hours ago."
"Restrain your admiration, Miss Wynkar," said Victor, as he placed a chair for me. "We have been taking a short turn on the terrace for the fresh air. I wonder you did not emulate our example."
"Terrace, indeed!" exclaimed Phil. "I've been on the piazza for half an hour, and I'll take my oath you weren't within gunshot of the terrace all that time."
"Don't perjure yourself, my good fellow," said Victor, coolly, "but assist us to some breakfast. The terrace has given us an appetite."
"How is your headache, my dear?" said my aunt, from across the table.
"My headache, ma'am? Oh, I forgot—I beg your pardon; it's better, thank you."
"How serious it must have been!" said Josephine. "Oh! by the way, Mr. Rutledge, it isn't worth while to ask them to join us inourparty this morning, is it? They didn't ask us to go with them."
Mr. Rutledge shrugged his shoulders. "I think, Miss Josephine, we are safe in asking them; they wouldn't accept, of course, and we should save our credit, you know."
"I would not trust them, sir. It's my advice that they're not asked."
"Then," returned Mr. Rutledge, with a low bow and his finest smile, "as with me to hear is to obey, I resign all thought of remonstrance, and acquiesce in the decree."
Josephine accepted the homage very graciously, and the jest was kept up around the table till I, for one, was heartily sick of it. No one supposed, however, that I would be fool enough to take it in earnest; but I was just such a fool; and when, an hour or two later, the horses were brought to the door, and the scattered party summoned from library, parlor, billiard-room, and garden, to prepare for the drive, I was struggling with a fit of ill-temper in my own room, which resulted in my "begging to be excused," when Thomas came to the door to announce the carriage.
My refusal didn't seem to damp the spirits of the party much. I looked through the half closed blinds to see them start. Victor at the last minute pleaded a headache, and "begged to be excused," on which occasion the captain made one of the jokes for which he was justly famous, and led off the laugh after it.
"The pretty darling's in the sulks, I suppose," I heard Grace say; but no one was at the pains to resent or applaud the remark, and I listened to the departing carriage-wheels and the lessening sound of merry voices with anything but a merry heart.
One never feels very complacent after spiting oneself; the inelegant describe the state of feeling by the adjective "small;" and I was not rendered any more comfortable by finding that I had made a prisoner of myself for the morning. If Victor had only gone, as I had anticipated, I should have consoled myself for the loss of the drive by a nice ramble around the grounds, and down to the stables; but as it was, I would not, for any consideration, have run the risk of encountering him. I heartily repented my walk before breakfast, and the relative position it seemed to place us in, made worse by our both remaining at home. Everybody and everything seemed to conspire to place us together, and my pride and my honesty both rebelled against such an arrangement. So, after listening to the sound of his steps pacing the terrace, the hall, and the piazza for a full hour, I began to find my captivity intolerable, and determined to make a visit to the housekeeper's room, and pay my devoirs to that functionary. Looking stealthily over the balusters, I ascertained that Victor was still smoking in the hall, so I ran across to the door of Mrs. Roberts' room, which was standing partly open, and asked if I might come in. Receiving permission, I entered, and did my best to appear amiable in Mrs. Roberts' eyes. She was, of course, as stiff as anything human could well be, but she was too busy to be very ungracious. This sudden influx of visitors had startled her out of the slow and steady routine of the last twenty years, and though, on the whole, she acquitted herself well, it was a very trying and bewildering position for the old woman. I longed for something to do to appease the self-reproach I felt for my bad temper, and it struck me that I couldn't do a more praiseworthy and disagreeable thing than to help Mrs. Roberts in some of the duties that seemed to press so heavily upon her. So, sitting down by her, I said:
"Mrs. Roberts, you'd better let me help you with those raisins; I haven't a thing to do this morning."
"That's a pity," said Mrs. Roberts, briefly. "In my day, young ladies always thought it most becoming to have some occupation."
"That's just my view of the case, Mrs. Roberts, and if you'll allow me, I'll have an occupation immediately."
Sylvie set the huge bowl of raisins on the table, and I drew them toward me, saying she must allow me to help her with them. Mrs. Roberts thought not; it would spoil my dress.
"Then I'll put an apron on."
She was afraid I did not know how.
"You can teach me, Mrs. Roberts;" and I began without further permission. To say that Mrs. Roberts melted before all this amiability would be to say that Mrs. Roberts had ceased to be Mrs. Roberts. She was a degree or two less gruff, I believe, at the end of the long hour I spent in her service, in the seeding of those wretched raisins; but that was all, and fortunately I had not expected more. I undertook it as a penance, and it did not lose that character from any excess of kindness on her part.
After the raisins were dispatched, Mrs. Roberts applied herself to the copying of a recipe from an old cookery-book, for which she seemed in something of a hurry. Dorothy was waiting for it, Sylvie said. "You'd better let me do it for you, Mrs. Roberts," I said, leaning over her shoulder. Mrs. Roberts declined, with dignity, for some time, but at last thoughtfully slid the spectacles off her nose, and seemed to deliberate about granting my request. She was not a very ready scribe, and she had a dozen other things to do, all of which weighed with my urgency, and in two minutes I was at the desk, copying out of a venerable cookery-book, the receipt that Mrs. Roberts indicated. I was in pretty engrossing business, I found one duty succeeded another very regularly; Mrs. Roberts, I saw, had determined to get as much out of me now as she could.
A dread of draughts was one of her peculiarities, so the door and the front windows were closed against the pleasant breeze, and to this I attribute it that we were unconscious of the return of the riding party till the door opened suddenly and Mr. Rutledge entered.
"Mrs. Roberts," he said, "you are wanted below. Miss Churchill has hurt her ankle in getting out of the carriage, and I have come to you for some arnica."
Mrs. Roberts bustled over to the medicine chest, and, taking the bottle of arnica and a roll of linen in her hand, hurried out of the room; while Mr. Rutledge, crossing over to the table where I sat, stood looking down at me without speaking, while I nervously went on with my writing without raising my eyes.
"Why did you not go with us this morning?" he said at last, sitting down by the table.
"I didn't want to."
"That is a very good reason; but I think you would have done better to have thwarted your inclination for once. There are two reasons why it would have been wiser to have gone."
"What is one?" I demanded.
"One is that your staying looked unamiable, and as if you could not take a joke."
"Well, it only looked as I felt. I was unamiable, and I didn't like the joke. What is the other?"
"The other, I am pretty sure to make you angry by giving, but I must risk that. Your refusing to go looked very much as if you preferred another tête-à-tête, to the society of us all."
"I cannot see that," I said, looking up flushed and angry. "When I supposed that I was the only member of the party who intended to stay at home, I cannot see how it could be inferred that I remained from any such motive."
"I, for one, had no doubt of it."
"You are kind!" I cried. "It is pleasant to feel I am always sure of one, at least, to put the kindest construction on what I do."
"Is my niece accounting for her willfulness in staying at home this morning?" said the slow, soft voice of Mrs. Churchill, that crept into my senses like a subtle poison, and silenced the angry words on my lips. "Are you not penitent,ma chère," she said, approaching me, and laying her cold hand lightly on my hair. "Do you not begin to see how unwise such tempers are? How often must I entreat you, my love, to be less hasty and suspicious and self-willed? Though I am not discouraged with these childish faults, Mr. Rutledge," turning to him apologetically, "I own they are somewhat trying. Ever since that unlucky night at the Academy of Music, I have felt"——
"Aunt Edith!" I exclaimed, with flashing eyes, averting my head from her touch and springing up. "Aunt Edith, that time has never been mentioned between us since you gave me my reprimand. I cannot understand why you bring it up now, and before a stranger!"
"Mr. Rutledge can hardly be called a stranger," she began.
"If not so to you, remember he is to me," I interrupted.
"However that may be," she went on, "he was unluckily the witness of that evening's errors. He saw the self-will and temper that you took no pains to conceal, and the love of admiration that led you to a most unaccountable act of imprudence."
"I should think," I returned, trembling with passion, "that that time would have no more pleasant memories for you than me. I should think we might agree not to stir among its ashes. There may be some smoldering remorse alive in them yet!"
For a moment, my aunt's face grew white, and her eye faltered and sunk; angry as I was, I bitterly repented the stab I had given her. Then she raised her eyes and fixed them on my face with a stern and freezing look. I don't know what she said; it was too cruel to listen to. I don't know what I answered; would that it had no record anywhere!
From that date, there was no disguise between aunt and niece of the sentiments they had mutually inspired. The flimsy gauze that reserve and decorum had raised between them was torn to fragments before that storm, and henceforth there was no pretence of an affection that had never existed. Two natures more utterly discordant and unsympathetic could not well be imagined. There was nothing but some frail bands of duty and convenience, that had kept up the mask of sympathy so far, and then and there they were snapped irrevocably; and the mask fell prone upon the ground and was trampled under foot.
They had better have turned me houseless into the street than have turned me out of their hearts in this way; in one case, I could have sought another shelter, and won myself another home. In this, I was driven out, burning with anger and stung with injustice, from every heart I had had a right to seek a home in, and before me lay a cold and inhospitable world. Was the outcast or the world to blame for the inevitable result? The outcast, no doubt; outcasts always are.
"Look—look, Josephine!" cried Grace, bursting into the library, where most of the party were assembled that evening. Josephine, with her foot on the sofa, being the nucleus. "Ella, and Phil, and I have just come from rowing on the lake, and see what we found, up by the pine trees at the other end of the lake, floating on the water."
"What is it?" said Josephine, languidly; "a water-lily?"
"Water-lilies used to be white when I studied botany, Joseph, and this, you may observe, is purple."
"And morning-glories, when I studied botany," said Phil, "did not grow on lakes, but in gardens. Now, as this was discovered on the water, the question naturally arises, how, by whom, and under what circumstances, did it get there?"
"And putting this and that together," said Ella Wynkar, "we think that the young lady who had morning-glories in her dress this morning, must have taken a row on the lake, instead of a walk on the terrace."
"That doesn't follow," said Victor, "any more than it would follow that Miss Wynkar had visited the desert of Sahara, if a straw hat similar to the one she has in her hand, should be found there."
"Mr. Viennet, you are not sufficiently calm for such difficult reasoning. The fact is established; don't attempt to controvert it," said Josephine.
"In any case, I am entitled to the flower, I think," he returned, taking it from the table, and fastening it in his button-hole.
"No one will dispute it with you, I fancy," said Josephine, with a laugh.
"You seem to have marked your way with morning-glories," said Mr. Rutledge, who, sitting by the table, was turning over the leaves of a book. There was another, crushed and faded, and staining the leaves with its purple blood.
"One can hardly believe they are contemporaries," said Victor, "mine is so much fresher."
"They are the frailest and shortest-lived of flowers," said Mr. Rutledge, tossing the flower away. "Hardly worth the passing admiration that their beauty excites."
"If hope but deferred causeth sickness of heart,What sorrow, to see it forever depart."
"This rain knocks the pic-nic all in the head," said Phil, lounging into the breakfast-room, "and everybody's sure of being in a bad humor on account of the disappointment. What shall we all do with ourselves?"
"Play billiards, can't we?" said the captain.
"I hate billiards, for my part," said Grace, looking dismally out of the window. "And Josephine's ankle's too bad to play, and Ellerton isn't well enough, and my pretty cousin there never did anything she was asked to yet; and Mr. Viennet consequently will refuse, and Phil's too lazy, and mamma won't take the trouble, and Mr. Rutledge has letters to write; so I think you'll be at a loss for anybody to play with you, Captain McGuffy."
"So it would seem," said the captain, consoling himself with some breakfast. "I can't see anything better to be done than this, then."
"It is rather your vocation, I think," returned Grace. "But with the rest of us, it is an enjoyment that at best cannot last over an hour, and there are twelve to be got rid of before bed-time."
"Itistrying," said Josephine. "And I've no more crimson for my sofa-cushion, and no chance of matching it nearer than Norbury. I really don't know what I shall do all day."
"If one only had a good novel!" yawned Ella Wynkar. "But there isn't anything worth reading in the library. I wonder Mr. Rutledge doesn't get some interesting books."
"There he comes; ask him," said Grace, maliciously.
"No, I don't like to. Mr. Rutledge is so odd, there's no knowing how he might take it."
Mr. Rutledge entered at this moment, followed by Tigre, and Miss Wynkar, partly because she was glad of anything to amuse herself with, and partly for the sake of a pretty attitude, sprung forward and caught the dog in her arms.
"Take care! he's just been out in the rain," exclaimed Mr. Rutledge, but not in time to save the pretty morning dress from Tigre's muddy paws; and with an exclamation of disgust she threw down the dog, who, whining piteously from a blow against the table, came limping over to me.
"Poor fellow! that was a sudden reverse," said Victor, stooping to pat him. "Give me your paw, my friend, and accept my sympathy."
Ella darted an angry look toward us, and, I am certain, never forgave the laugh that escaped me.
"This is a dull day, young ladies," exclaimed Mr. Rutledge, throwing himself into a chair. "How shall we dispose of it?"
"Philosophy to the rescue!" said Josephine, with a charming smile. "It is only dull compared with what you had promised us."
"The pic-nic will hold good for another day, we'll trust. In the meantime, what shall we do to-day?"
"Who ever heard of doing anything but growl on such a day as this?" said Phil, leaning over Josephine's chair.
"Ladies weren't made for anything but sunshine, I'm certain," said the captain, thoughtfully, over his last cup of coffee.
Miss Wynkar and the Misses Churchill made the expected outcry at this speech, and Mr. Rutledge, after the excitement had subsided, went on with a proposal that quite brought down the house. It was to the effect that, as the gay people of the neighborhood, the Masons of Windy Hill, and the Emersons of Beech Grove, had each proposed something for the general benefit, it seemed expedient that some entertainment should be got up at Rutledge. What should it be? The Masons were to have tableaux, and the Emersons' invitations were out for afête champêtre. What was left for them to do?
"Oh! a thousand things," exclaimed Josephine, with sparkling eyes. "A ball, or private theatricals, or a masquerade—anything, in fact, would be delightful."
"A plain ball would never do after the fête and tableaux," said Ella Wynkar, decidedly.
"Whatever you do, I beg, don't let those simpering Mason girls get ahead of you," suggested Grace. "They've been rehearsing their tableaux for a fortnight, and they mean to have them perfect."
"What do you think of theatricals, then?" said Mr. Rutledge. "We can send for dresses, etc., from town, and we have plenty of time to rehearse. And, Arbuthnot, I know yon have all the requisites for a manager, and could bring out a play in excellent style."
"You will be astonished to find the amount of dramatic talent undeveloped in this company," exclaimed Victor. "All the improvement I can suggest is, that the play represented should be written for the occasion. Now, if I might be allowed, I should propose that Miss Wynkar and Captain McGuffy be named to write the play, and Ellerton, as the man of the most cultivated literary taste, and soundest judgment, be appointed to revise and correct it. The éclat of producing such an entirely original play, you must see, would be immense."
The irony of his speech was too broad for even the Wynkars to miss, and Ella colored angrily, while Ellerton, who was not a proficient at repartee, moved uneasily on his chair, and looked very wretched, till Mr. Rutledge came to the rescue with a few words, that, administering the keenest, quietest, politest possible reprimand to Victor for his impertinence, reinstated the objects of his ridicule in complacency again, and quite changed the face of the day. Victor bit his lip; these two liked each other less and less every day, it was but too evident. Victor's overbearing and tyrannical disposition found an incessant obstacle to its gratification in the iron will and better disciplined, but equally unyielding character of Mr. Rutledge. I tried in vain to remove Victor's prejudices against his host; but there was an angry flash of his eye whenever the subject was mentioned, that did not encourage me to continue it. And it was equally impossible not to resent Mr. Rutledge's misapprehension of Victor's character. In everything he misjudged him, and, it was evident, put down to the worst motive much that was only hasty and ill-judged. While my reason told me that he was often to blame, the injustice and harshness of Mr. Rutledge's judgment often roused my sympathy in his behalf, and that dangerous sentiment, pity, was creeping insensibly into my heart. He was, it was true, a man of no religious principle, but I had come to regard that as the inevitable result of his foreign education, and in no way his own fault. Then there was a light, careless tone in his conversation, a disregard of others, an almost imperceptible sneer, that a month ago I should have looked upon with alarm and distrust. But the subtle flattery of his devotion, the contrast between his manner and that of Mr. Rutledge, and, indeed, of all the others, had melted away these prejudices, and now I hardly saw, and only half blamed, the self-willed impetuosity and impatient sneering of the young foreigner, who, there could be no doubt, was daily becoming more unpopular among the party at Rutledge.
Our host had never liked him; Miss Churchill could not be expected to continue her favor, now that he took no pains to conceal what was the attraction for him at Rutledge; Grace had never cordially liked any one in her life, but Victor had been rather a favorite, till he had put down her sauciness, on one or two occasions, in such a manner as to make her as vehement in her dislike as her lazy nature rendered her capable of being; Ella Wynkar hated him—he laughed at her French, and never omitted an opportunity of turning her pretensions into ridicule; Ellerton had formerly been very much infatuated with the young Frenchman, who had carried all before him in society, and been so general a favorite, but Ellerton was too tempting a subject for Victor's humor, and he was very careless of his popularity; even with Phil and the captain he was growing indifferent and distant. Mrs. Churchill alone showed no change in her feeling toward him; he was only acting the part she meant him to act, and fulfilling the design she had in inviting him to accompany us. These feelings, and their causes, so apparent on a retrospective study of them, were, of course, by the restraints of good breeding, and the relative positions of all parties, studiously concealed, and only to be guessed at in unguarded moments.
"You are not going to follow the dramatic corps, I hope," said Victor, with a curl of his lip, as the party moved off to the library, to look over some plays and consult about the proposed entertainment.
"They would have asked me if they had wanted me, I suppose," I answered, reddening a little.
"Then, is there any law to prevent our staying where we are?" he asked, throwing himself back in the deep window seat opposite me. And there we passed the live-long morning, Victor idly twisting the worsteds of my work, and idly gazing out upon the storm, or in upon my face, and idly talking in his low, rich voice, and holding me, against my will, enthralled.
The portraits on the walls looked down upon us with a dumb intelligence, almost a warning sternness; the rain tried to weary us out; the old clock struck the passing hours distinctly; the sound of voices in the library, after a long while, died away, and then the party passed through the hall and into the parlor, and Josephine's voice, at the piano succeeded, and then a dance, but still we did not move. What was the spell that kept me there, I could not have told. Whatever it was, it was tightening the toils around me, and shutting me off more hopelessly than ever from all paths but the one I had almost involuntarily taken.
It appeared at dinner, that the theatricals were given up, owing, principally, I could not but suspect, to the want of harmony that has characterized all the attempts at private theatricals that I have ever witnessed, no one, under any circumstances, having been known to be pleased with the rôle assigned to him or her, and all manner of discontent prevailing on all sides. But Mr. Rutledge, with great discretion, put it upon other grounds—the short time that intervened for preparing them, etc. It was agreed that patriotism and propriety both pointed to the Fourth of July as the appropriate day, and abal masquéwas determined on instead of the theatricals. It was to be the most delightful affair. Mr. Rutledge had promised to ask everybody, to send to town for dresses, and to have the house so beautifully decorated.
"Ah!" said Josephine with a ravishing smile, "Mr. Rutledge is the best, the kindest of men."
Mr. Rutledge, starting from a fit of abstraction at that moment, certainly did not convey the idea of any very excessive kindness or goodness. The sternest frown contracted his brow, and in the cold rigidity of his face, one would never have looked for anything gentle or tender, and the expression that succeeded it under the influence of Josephine's smile, was bitter and cynical, even to the most indifferent observer.
Rain-storms in June have a way of abating their violence toward evening, and breaking away enough to let the declining sun look for half an hour over the wet and shining earth, and make of the desolate place the freshest and most beautiful of Edens, cheering the silenced birds into song, and the wet flowers into perfume, and the breaking clouds into yellow lustre. A whole fair sunshiny day is nothing to it. The sudden brilliancy and freshness are worth all the gloom that have made them so dazzling. There was not a tree in the park that afternoon, not a flower on the lawn, that did not shine and sparkle with a brightness it had never worn before. There was a fine coolness too, in the fresh wind, soft and June-like as it was.
"Is it too late for a ride?" asked Josephine, stepping out on the piazza where we were all sitting. "A ride on horseback would be delightful, would it not?"
"Delightful!" echoed Ella Wynkar.
"It would be a capital thing," said Phil, rising. "I wonder how it is about saddle-horses—are there any fit for ladies in the stable, do you know?"
"There are only two that would do for us ladies, Mr. Rutledge said," answered Josephine, "but several that you gentlemen could ride, and I think it would be the nicest thing in the world to have a brisk canter this fine afternoon. What do you say, Captain McGuffy?"
"By all means," responded the captain. "I wonder where Mr. Rutledge is."
"In the library," said Grace.
"Then, Miss Josephine, you are the proper person to go and ask his permission. We know for whose sweet sake all obstacles are overcome, and if you ask, we are sure of our ride."
"Yes," said Ellerton, who was excellent in chorus. "Yes, there is no doubt he'll have the stables emptied in five minutes, if you want a ride."
Phil bit his lip, as Josephine, with a very conscious look, sprang up, saying, "Absurd! It's only because you are afraid to ask yourselves that you want me to go." And with a coquettish shrug of the shoulders, and a very arch laugh, she ran through the hall and disappeared at the library door.
In a few moments she reappeared, and accompanied by Mr. Rutledge, joined us on the piazza. There was a subdued tone of triumph in her voice as she said,
"The horses will be at the door in five minutes, good people, not a moment to be lost. Who is going?"
"I am sorry," said Mr. Rutledge, "that there are but two horses fit for the ladies' use. There are enough, however, for all the gentlemen. Mr. Viennet, you will find that chestnut mare you were admiring yesterday, very good under the saddle."
Victor bowed, and, looking at me, said, "What do you ride?"
"I do not mean to ride this afternoon," I said quickly.
"Come, Ella!" exclaimed Josephine, "it will take us some minutes to put on our habits," and the two friends flew upstairs.
Mr. Rutledge approaching me, said in a low tone, "Will you lend Madge to your cousin or Miss Wynkar if you do not ride yourself?"
"It is a matter of very small moment to me who rides Madge," I returned haughtily. "You cannot imagine that I attach any serious meaning to the jest of last fall."
"That's as you will," he said, carelessly turning away.
I had no desire to see the equestrians set off, so going into the hall for my garden hat and a light shawl, I was stealing quietly out at the north door, when on the threshold I met Mr. Rutledge and Grace, who had come around the piazza and were just entering.
"Where are you going?" said that young person inquisitively.
"I have not quite made up my mind," I answered, trying to pass her.
"You're going to walk, and I have a great mind to go with you," she said, intercepting my exit.
"You will excuse me for saying I had rather not have you," I returned shortly.
"Sweet pet! Its temper don't improve," she said provokingly.
"You are an insufferable child," I exclaimed, vexed beyond endurance, and, pushing her aside, I hurried through the doorway. But the fringe of her shawl caught in the bracelet on my arm, and, much against my will, I had to turn back to release it. Grace enjoyed my vexation unspeakably, and did not assist very materially in unfastening the fringe, which, if the truth must be told, was a very difficult task for my trembling and impatient fingers. The touch of Mr. Rutledge's cold, steady hand on my arm, as he stooped to help me, added tenfold to my impatience.
"Break it," I exclaimed, "you'll never be able to untangle it."
"Oh that mysterious bracelet!" cried Grace. "You'd never tell me where it came from."
"It is a perfect torment," I exclaimed, trying to wrench the long silk fringe from the links in which it had become hopelessly twisted. "It catches in everything."
"Then why do you wear it, may I ask?" said Mr. Rutledge, coolly.
"Only because I cannot help myself."
"Can't I assist you?" asked Victor, who had followed me.
"Very possibly," said Mr. Rutledge. "It is rather a delicate affair and requires patience, more, I confess, than I have at command."
"And some strength. Can't you break this thing, Mr. Viennet? I cannot unclasp it, and it annoys me beyond endurance."
"I have no doubt that Mr. Viennet can," said Mr. Rutledge, laying the arm, bracelet, and entangled fringe in Victor's hand.
He tried in vain for a moment to disengage the fringe or unclasp the bracelet, while Grace drawled,
"I advise you to hurry, Mr. Viennet; my cousin bites her lip as if she were desperately angry."
"I cannot break it," said Victor, "without hurting you, of course."
"No matter for that! I am so anxious to have it off, that I should not mind a little pain."
Victor shook his head. "Do not ask me to do it."
"Perhaps I should be less tender," said Mr. Rutledge, bending over it again, and the frail links yielded instantly to the vice-like grasp of his strong hand. A cry escaped me as the bracelet snapped, and fell on the ground at my feet.
"You are hurt!" exclaimed Victor, starting forward and catching my hand over which the blood from the wrist was trickling.
"It is nothing," I said, pulling it away, and wrapping my shawl around it. "It is only scratched a little."
"Not very deep, I fancy," said Mr. Rutledge; while Grace, shrugging her shoulders, exclaimed, as she entered the house:
"Well! you are the oddest set of people! All three of you as pale as ashes, and as much in earnest as if it were a matter of life and death! Mr. Rutledge, I shall coax you to tell me all about it."
"About what?" asked Mr. Rutledge, following her. And as I caught Grace's saucy voice, and Mr. Rutledge's quick, sarcastic laugh, as they passed down the hall, my very breath came quick and short, under the maddening pressure of a pain I had never felt before. Pique, jealousy, vexation, I had known enough of, but this, that dashed all other passions to the dust, and held me gasping in such terrible subjection, was nearer to a deadly sin. It shot so keen through every vein, it burned so madly in my brain, that for a moment, pride and reason were stunned; and, regardless of Victor's eyes fixed on my face, with a low cry of pain, I pressed my hand to my forehead, then flew down the steps, and vanished from his sight in the shrubbery. He could hardly have followed me if he had chosen; I was out of sight of the house before he could have realized that I had left him. The cool, fresh wind in my face only allayed the pain enough to give me fresh strength to fly from what, alas! could not be left behind. The still, unruffled expanse of the lake, as I reached its banks, gave me that sort of a pang, that it gives one to wake up from a short troubled sleep, when death and trouble have come in the night, and find the sunshine flooding the room. It was so utterly out of tune, so calmly impassive while such hot passion was raging in my heart—so smiling and indifferent while I was throbbing with such acute pain, that I sprang away from the sight of it, and hurried on into the woods, never pausing till I had reached the pine grove at the head of the lake.
It was better there; the pine-trees moan when there is no breath to stir them—sunshine and singing-birds penetrate their solemn depths but rarely; and at last I stopped, panting and trembling, on a knoll that rose abruptly in the midst of this forest sanctuary. I sunk down on the slippery ground at the foot of a tall pine, and leaning my throbbing temples on my hands, tried to think and reason.
Do the wild flowers and mountain herbage raise their heads and meet the sunshine and shake off the blight, an hour after the burning lava has swept over their frail beauty? Thought, reason, faith, were as impossible at that moment to me, as growth, and feeling, and verdure are to them. I did not think—I could not reason; some hateful words rang in my ears, and a wild, confused purpose mingled with the chaos that passion had made in my mind; but beyond that I was incapable of thought.
An hour, perhaps, passed so; the sunset was fast fading out of the sky, when the sound of voices through the woods struck my ear, and listening, I recognized the tones of the returning riding-party. There was a bridle-path, I knew, just below this knoll, through which they were returning from Norbury, and springing up, I gathered my light muslin dress about me, and pressing through the thicket that lay between it and me, waited for them to pass. A low fence ran across the ravine, and half-kneeling behind this, I watched for them with eager eyes. At last they came, defiling past me one by one, through the narrow path, the gentlemen first, then Ella Wynkar, and in a moment after, Madge Wildfire's glossy head appeared through the opening, so near that I might have patted her arched neck, or felt the breath from her dilated nostrils, and touched the gloved hand that held the reins so tightly in her impatient mouth. Josephine's dark cheek glowed with exercise and excitement, and as she sat, with her head half-turned, in attention to the low tones of the horseman who followed her closely, I could not help acknowledging, with a sharp pang, the beauty that I had never before appreciated. And her companion saw it too; his stern face softened as he watched the radiant smiles chase each other over her varying mouth; his eye, restless with an impatient fire, fell with pleasure on her eager, attentive face.
He was thinking—how well I knew it! A thousand devils whispered it in my ear—he was thinking, "this face is gentle and womanly—it turns to me for pleasure—it is bright and gay—no storms sweep over it; it has never repulsed and disappointed me. Shall I end the doubt, and say, it is the face that shall be the loadstar of my future, the sunshine and pleasure of my life?"
The horses threaded their way daintily down the narrow ravine—the pleasant voices died away in the distance; I raised myself from my bending attitude, and with blanched cheeks and parted lips, strained my gaze to catch the last trace of them. If the assembled tribes of earth and air had been there to see, I could not have brought one tinge of color to my pallid face, nor taken the deadly stare out of my eyes, I could only have done as I did now, when suddenly I found I was not alone, utter a faint exclamation, and turning sick and giddy, lean against the fence for support. The stealthy, cat-like tread of the intruder brought him to my side in a moment. I knew, from the instant I met the glance of his basilisk eyes, that he had been reading my face to some purpose—that he knew the miserable story written on it.
"You look agitated," said Dr. Hugh, bending toward me obsequiously. "May I ask if anything has happened to distress you?"
His tones were so hateful that I cried quickly: "No, nothing so much as seeing you;" and, springing across the low barrier, I hurried down the path. I knew he was following me stealthily; nothing but that fear would have driven me back to the house again. The path was narrow and irregular; other paths branched off from it, and before I got within sight of the lake again, I was thoroughly bewildered, and in the gathering twilight, the huge trees took weird forms, the "paths grew dim," and no familiar landmark appeared to guide me. Pausing in fright and bewilderment, I crouched for a moment behind a clump of trees, and listened. I had eluded my pursuer; in a second's time, I heard his soft step treading cautiously and swiftly down the path that I had inadvertently left. With a sigh of relief, I looked about me, and finding that the lake was just visible through an opening in the trees, knew my whereabouts immediately, and only waited for Dr. Hugh to be well out of the way to start across the park toward the house.
Several minutes elapsed before I ventured to rise from my hiding-place; listening again intently, I was about to spring from the thicket, and effect my escape across the park, when, with a start of fear, I heard a heavy step crashing among the underbrush in the direction from which we had come; a heavy step, and then a pause. My heart seemed to stand still as I waited to hear more. The next sound was a low whistle; a long pause, and then the signal was repeated. No answer came; and with a low and surly oath, the new-comer advanced nearer to where I crouched. Through a gap in the thicket, I could see him as he approached, and even by this dusky light, I recognized the thickset figure and slouching gait of the man whom Victor had so wantonly insulted on the evening of our arrival—of whose enmity there could be no reasonable doubt. It was not a comfortable thought, but certainly some evil purpose must have brought him here; and for whom, too, was that signal given? It seemed almost incredible that such a spirit of revenge should possess itself of such a sluggish, low-born nature; yet I could not doubt that it was some design of revenge that kept him lurking about the neighborhood. I knew that Victor would be in peril if he were abroad to-night. And it was not comfortable, either, to remember that it was my fault that he had given the insult; for my protection that he had incurred this malice. How should I ever forgive myself if any evil came of it? Victor was my only friend at Rutledge; I could not but be grateful; the recollection of a thousand kindnesses started up at the thought of the danger I had involved him in, and I almost forgot that now I shared it.
Motionless and breathless, I saw him pass within two feet of me, stop, whistle again, and then, after a pause, throwing himself at full length on the ground, with his face toward the park, within a few yards of where I was, lie waiting for I did not dare to think what. Victor, I was certain, would be somewhere about the grounds, watching for my return; this direction, sooner or later, he would inevitably take. Moment after moment crept on; every movement of the stranger—even his heavy breathing—were as distinct as if he had been within reach of my hand, and the least motion on my part—the faintest rustle of my dress, or of the branches of the thicket—would, of course, be as audible to him, and most dangerous to me; indeed, if he were to turn this way, I could hardly hope to escape detection, for my light drapery, only half hid behind the dark thicket, would inevitably betray me. How long this would last—how determined he could be in his vigil—I dreaded to conjecture. None but Victor was likely to come to my assistance, and that was just the very worst of all.
There was still enough light left in the west to distinguish, as I looked eagerly that way, that a figure, from the direction of the house, was crossing the lawn toward us. I turned sick with fear as I recognized, bounding before the rapidly-approaching walker, Victor's constant companion, little Tigre; and this, no doubt, was Victor. I alone could warn him of the danger that awaited him; but, faint and almost paralyzed with fear, I had not strength nor courage to stir. The villain beside me, less quick-sighted, had not yet discovered his advance.
He was not yet half-way across the park; there might be time. I made a desperate resolve, and, clearing the copse at one bound, flew, as only terror and desperation can fly. I heard the startled oath the man uttered, and the cracking of the birch boughs as he regained his feet; I heard him spring forward in pursuit, but by that time I was out of the wood and on the lawn, and in another instant I had reached my goal.
Catching his arm, I exclaimed vehemently, forgetting everything in my terror:
"Don't go near that horrid wood,Victor!Come back, as you value your life!"
I was too much terrified to await his reply; but, calling to him to follow me, I ran on at the top of my speed, and never paused till I had reached the terrace, and, sinking down on the stone steps, I covered my face with my hands, panting and exhausted. Raising my head as I heard his step beside me, I began:
"You don't know how narrow an escape you have had! That"——
"You have made a mistake," interrupted my companion. "It is notVictor."
With an exclamation of amazement and chagrin, I sprung from him up the steps. I had made a miserable mistake, indeed; it was Mr. Rutledge.
"But 'mid his mirth, 'twas often strangeHow suddenly his cheer would change,His look o'ercast and lower—Even so 'twas strange how, evermore,Soon as the passing pang was o'er,Forward he rushed, with double glee,Into the stream of revelry."SCOTT.
Thefête champêtreproved a success; it was a perfect day; the house, a very fine modern one, and the grounds, had appeared to the best advantage; the dancing tent had been just full enough, the toilettes lovely, and the whole thing so well got up and successful, that Josephine began half to repent not having decided upon such an entertainment for the Fourth instead of the proposed masquerade.
"This is just the place for a fête," she said, as we were all sitting in the parlor next morning "talking it over." "This lawn is twice the size of the Emersons', and this piazza, inclosed and decorated, would be the prettiest thing in the world. Indeed, there is no doubt in my mind but that it would have been an infinitely handsomer affair than theirs, if we had decided upon afête."
"It would not have been dignified, Miss Josephine," said Mr. Rutledge, with a smile, "to have followed so closely in their steps, and I do not think we need have any fears for the masquerade."
"Not the smallest," said Mrs. Churchill. "With Mr. Rutledge as leader, and Josephine as aid-de-camp, I am certain there is no such word as fail. This absurd child," she continued, bending gracefully over her pretty daughter, "this absurd child, Mr. Rutledge, enters so with all her heart into whatever she undertakes, that I have to laugh at her continually. She can think of nothing now, but this masquerade, and only this morning"——
"Now, mamma!" remonstrated Josephine.
"Only this morning," her mother went on, "she said to me, 'I was so worried, mamma, I couldn't sleep last night, for Mr. Rutledge has trusted to my taste about the decorations, and if he should be disappointed, I should be perfectly miserable.' Did you ever hear of anything so silly?" she continued, with a light caress.
"Never," said Mr. Rutledge, looking admiringly at Josephine's averted conscious face. "Am I so very terrible, then?"
"No," said Josephine with a pretty shyness, "oh no! but then, you know—you see—I should be so sorry to disappoint or displease you. I know you wouldn't say a word, but I should be perfectly miserable if you were not pleased."
"Where are you going, Phil?" asked Grace, as her cousin strode out into the hall.
"Anywhere, Gracie," I heard him say, under his breath. "It doesn't make much difference where."
Poor Phil! There was a sharp pain at his honest heart, I knew. I watched him from the window, as with hasty strides he crossed the lawn, and disappeared into the woods. But Josephine didn't see; Mr. Rutledge was sketching a plan for the decorations, and she was leaning over the paper with fixed attention.
"If those people are coming to lunch," said Ella Wynkar, getting up from a tête-à-tête chat with the captain, "it is time we were dressed to receive them. Come, Josephine, it would never be forgiven, if we should not be ready."
"Yes," exclaimed Mr. Rutledge, starting up and looking at his watch, "I had forgotten about that. They will be here in half an hour. Miss Josephine, did you ever effect your toilet in half an hour, in your life?"
"You shall see!" cried Josephine, dancing out of the room. Mrs. Churchill followed, with a laughing apology for her daughter's wild spirits; since she had been at this delightful place, she had, she declared, been like a bird let loose.
"The linnet born within the cage,That never knew the summer woods,"
I longed to say to my aunt, would hardly know how to enjoy them. The miserable prisoner that had spent all its life, in narrow cramped limits, on the sill of a city window, hopped on a smooth perch, and eaten canary-seed and loaf-sugar since its nativity, would hardly be at home in wide, sunny fields, or "groves deep and high," would shudder to clasp with its tender claws the rough bark of the forest twigs, and would be doubtful of the flavor of a wild strawberry, and think twice before it would stoop to drink of the roaring mountain-stream. It would, I fancy, before nightfall, creep miserably back to its cage, as the fittest, safest, most comfortable place for its narrowed and timid nature.
"So!" said Victor, looking at me with a curl on his handsome lip, as the drawing-room was vacated by all but ourselves. "Are you going to spend an hour of this splendid fresh morning in making yourself fine?"
"Not if I know myself intimately!" I exclaimed, cramming my work, thimble, and scissors into my workbox, and springing up. "I do not fancy devoting three hours to those tiresome Mason girls nor their horse-and-dog brothers. I shall never be missed, and I am going to the village for a walk."
"Why to the village?" said Victor, following me, and reaching down my flat hat from the deer's horns that it had been decorating in the hall. "Why will you not come to the lake and let me row you up to the pines?"
"I ought to have paid my devoirs to the housekeeper at the Parsonage the very day I arrived," I answered, as we descended the steps. "She is a great friend of mine, and she will be hurt if I neglect her any longer. Indeed, it's a very pleasant walk, and you'll be repaid for taking it, if we should find Mr. Shenstone at home. He is so kind, and the very best man in the world."
"That's the clergyman?" said Victor, making a grimace. "I don't affect clergymen, as a general thing, but for your sake I will try to be favorably impressed; your friends I always try to admire; our host, for instance, who just passed down the terrace, without so much as a look toward us, though he could not possibly have avoided seeing us. Why do you bite your lip?" continued he, watching me narrowly. "I cannot learn the signs of your face. Pale and red, smiling and frowning, like any April day. There! what chord have I touched now? The thought gave you actual pain."
"Nothing!" I exclaimed, hurriedly. "There's Stephen on the lawn. I want to talk to him," and I ran across to where he stood, leaning on his rake, watching us. While I talked to him, Victor threw himself upon the heap of new-cut hay at a little distance from us, and played with Tigre. I saw that Stephen's eyes often wandered to where he lay, his hat off, the wind lifting the dark hair from his handsome face.
"If I might make so bold," said Stephen, in a low tone, as I was turning away, "has that young gentleman lived long in this country?"
"I do not know, really," I said, with a laugh. "Shall I ask him, Stephen?"
"No, Miss, I shouldn't like you to ask him; but I should like to know."
"I'll find out for you sometime," I said, as I nodded a good bye and rejoined Victor.
It was, as he said, a splendid day—all sultriness dissipated by the strong wind. We had a beautiful walk through the woods, though I couldn't quite forget "our rustic friend," as Victor called his unknown enemy; but he made such a joke of it that it was impossible to have much feeling of alarm connected with it. The village, however, he seemed not to care to visit.
"Had I not better wait for you here?" he said, lingering as we passed out of the woods into the lane that led to the village.
"No, indeed," I said, perversely; "if you stay here I shall go home another way."
He laughed, but rather uneasily, and followed me.
I bent my head so that my hat hid my face as we entered the low gate of the Parsonage, for I dreaded Victor's inquiring eyes just then. I preceded him down the little path bordered with flowers, and, stepping on the porch, raised the knocker. We waited for several minutes, and still no answer; so, telling my companion to follow me, I passed on into the study.
"What a cool, shady, pleasant room!" said Victor, as he gave me a seat and threw himself into another. "I am sure I could write a sermon myself against the pomps and vanities if I had such a sweet, calm retreat to repose in meantime."
"Pshaw!" he exclaimed impatiently, "what do these men know of temptation, who have never felt a passion stronger than this summer wind, nor seen a rood beyond their own study windows! These calm, slow natures, bred in the retirement and quiet of the country, can preach, perhaps with profit, to their humble flocks; but to men who have been in the thick of the fight, never."
I shook my head. "You will not say that after you have seen Mr. Shenstone; but here he comes."
The clergyman stood for a moment in the doorway before he entered, his tall, stooping figure nearly filling it. I advanced to meet him, and Victor rose. The room was so dark that at first he did not recognize me, and, of course, saw but indistinctly my companion. But as I spoke, he extended his hand cordially, and gave us both a kind reception.
"I have been expecting a visit from you," he said, sitting down beside me, and speaking in the quiet tone that was habitual with him, and looking at me with his kind smile. "You have been here some days, have you not?"
"Yes, sir, and I've meant to come; but there has been something going on every day that has interfered, and I have supposed every day, sir, that you would be there."
"Ah!" he said, with the slightest perceptible fading of the smile, "I have been so long out of gay company that I should not be at home there now. The quiet of my little village suits me best."
I knew this would be a confirmation of Victor's judgment, so I hurried on to say, "But, sir, you sometimes go among gay people. I am sure you are often at Windy Hill, and at the Emersons, are you not?"
"Sometimes—oh! yes; but it seems different with Rutledge. It would be to me," he went on in a lower tone, "unspeakably grating and painful to see that place throw off the gloom and silence that it has worn for twenty years—twenty years and more. But you cannot be expected to understand this. I had forgotten you were nearly a child as yet. You only know regret and sorrow by name, I suppose."
There must have been an involuntary denial of this on my face, for he looked at me attentively for a moment; then, in a tone that had a little sadness in it, he said:
"But you are older than you were last fall, my child, I see; one takes quick strides sometimes toward maturity after one has crossed the threshold. This little girl and I, Mr. Viennet, were very good friends last year and I hope that the world has not separated us quite, though it has changed one of us a little, I fear."
I could not keep back the sudden tears that rushed into my eyes; the tone of sympathy so strange to my ears exorcised the evil tempers that had swayed me so long. If it had not been for Victor's presence, I should have thrown off the reserve and silence that I had so long maintained toward all around me, and have saved myself perhaps from years of misery.
Only Mr. Shenstone's compassionate eyes saw the emotion that flashed through mine; murmuring some excuse about finding Mrs. Arnold, I quitted the room. I found her in the apartment that had been my sick-room, busy as ever with her silent, rapid needle. Throwing my arms around her neck, I kissed her affectionately.
"Why have you not been before?" she said, quietly.
"Because I haven't done anything right or pleasant since I came," I returned, with a little bitterness.
Mrs. Arnold shook her head. "Mr. Shenstone would tell you not to let that go on."
"Don't!" I exclaimed, with an impatient gesture; "don't tell me what I ought to do—don't talk to me about my duty. I am sick and tired of it all. I want to forget all about everything that makes me miserable, and only be petted and made much of," and, throwing myself down on a low stool at her feet, I drew her hand around my neck.
"You were always willful," she said, sadly; "but you used to like to hear about your duty."
"I don't now; I've got over that. I shall never come to the Parsonage if you talk to me about it. We don't have time for duty at Rutledge now-a-days. Oh! Mrs. Arnold, it seems like a different place. Why don't you come and see how fine the house looks. There's to be a masquerade on the Fourth. You should come and see how beautifully it will be decorated, and how pretty all our dresses will be."
The hand around my neck was quickly withdrawn; with a sudden start, she rose and walked nervously about the room, the color fluttering in her cheeks, and her hand passing rapidly over her smooth, grey hair.
"Yes, yes," she said at last, sitting down and trying to command herself. "I know it is all right; you are young and you ought to enjoy yourself. I hope you are happy there."
"You need not imagine that I am!" I exclaimed bitterly. "You may be sure I have enough to keep me down, and make me wretched, gay as they all are. But I'm not going to talk about it," I said, interrupting myself, "for you'll begin to tell me how I ought to bear it, and that I can't listen to now. Tell me how the school goes on. Does the new teacher work well, and do the children like her?"
"Very much," said Mrs. Arnold, relapsing slowly into her ordinary manner. "I should like you to go with me some day to see them."
The archives of the Parish School, and many minor matters of interest, served to occupy our tongues, if not our minds, for the next half hour, and it was only the sudden recollection of having left Mr. Shenstone and Victor, two entire strangers, at each other's mercy, that brought an end to the interview. Starting up, I said: