CHAPTER IXTHE HOUSE PARTY
Sitting next to his aunt, with his arm on the back of her chair, Harry, after a cough or two and a furtive look at Kenneth, began to unfold his plan. He wanted to invite five or six swells to his house across the way, he said. He had thought of it when he was a boy and spent a vacation with Tom Haynes in Kentucky. Tom had had one the fall before and so had another comrade, and when they heard of his big house untenanted, they said it was just the place “to paint red,” off there in the country, where no one could be disturbed with their nightly revels, or threaten them with the police, as had once been done.
“I told them the house was scarcely habitable,” he said, “and that only made them the fiercer. It would be like camping out, and they are resolved to come.”
“And do they still think us ‘niggers’?” Kenneth asked, remembering Hal’s letter.
“Oh, pshaw!” was Harry’s laughing reply. “That was all a joke. Tom and the rest of ’em know you are a rising doctor, and that uncle and aunt are the nicest old couple in the world. Aren’t you, Aunt Mary?”
He had his arm around her neck, and was looking at her with the soft, pleading eyes to which she always yielded.
“What is it you want me to do?” she asked, and he replied:
“I shall get some women to clean up the house, and some one to cook for us. I did think of getting old Polly,—father’s nurse, you know,—but she has broken her hip, and none of the other Morris darkies want to come, so I must have some one else, and if you will overlook them a little and keep them going, and—and—if I could put up some cots in the ball-room, it would seem more like a picnic. Are you willing?”
He was smoothing Mrs. Stannard’s hair and caressing her arm, while he waited for her to answer.
“The ball-room is pretty dirty now, and there are twelve windows to wash,” she said, at last.
“Oh, that’s nothing. None of the boys will care if the windows are covered with cobwebs, and I’ll get a woman to clean it up. You shall not be troubled at all. Now give in, like a dear old auntie.”
She gave in as he knew she would, but the deacon objected. Six young fellows sleeping in one room would raise “old Harry” and keep him awake nights, he said, but he was finally overruled, as his wife had been. Hal guaranteed that the “old Harry” should not be raised, and that his guests should go to their cots in their stocking feet, and up the stairs which lead to the ball-room from the outside. Two or three of the steps were broken, but he would get them mended. In fact, he would do all he could to spare his aunt, who was again assured that she was the dearest old auntie in the world and the assurance emphasized with a kiss.
Kenneth did not like the arrangement at all. Six young men of Harry’s stamp coming to “paint the town red” were not desirable neighbors, even if they did go up the outside stairs to bed in their stocking feet. But they were coming. His mother had given her consent, and she went herself to superintend the cleaning of the house and the settling it, as far as Hal wanted it settled. Nothing but chairs, a lounge or two, a dining-room table and one or two smaller tables were necessary, besides the kitchen furniture, he said. The bareness of the rooms would suit them far better than if they were luxuriously furnished. They would not be in them a great deal except at meal-time and possibly evenings. They were going to hunt and fish and row and drive, and perhaps go for a day to Rocky Point, where there were one or two choice spirits like themselves, Hal said. He was very happy in his preparations, which went on rapidly, so that within a week the shut-up house had assumed quite a festive air, with the furniture Hal thought necessary, and the furniture his aunt insisted upon, and some of which was brought from her own house. Among other articles were curtains and rugs and two or three easy chairs, and a mirror which had been her mother’s.
“If that comes back whole I shall be glad,” Kenneth said. “Better leave it where it is?”
“Comes back whole,” his mother repeated. “What kind of folks do you think are coming to smash looking-glasses? They are all gentlemen,—‘first cut,’ Harry says.”
Kenneth laughed. When studying with Dr. Catherinin Rocky Point he had met Hal’s choice spirits, and had heard of a party given by one of them, and that at its close two of the number were on the floor and nearly every dish on the table broken. But he would not tell this to his mother, who seemed rather proud that Hal’s fine friends were coming to visit her, as she seemed to think they were. She had no respect for Hal’s father, but she had a vast amount of respect for the Morris family, and had always looked upon Hal as a little superior to herself, because he belonged to it.
“Let him have a play spell in his own house if he wants to, and you jine in when you can,” she said to Kenneth, who answered that as there was an unusual amount of sickness in town, as well as in Rocky Point, where he was now called in Dr. Catherin’s absence, he should not have much time to spend at the Morris house. He should, of course, be polite to Harry’s guests, and do what he could to make it pleasant for them.
With this his mother was content. She had been very busy, going many times a day across the road to see that the women hired from Millville were doing their work right, and herself washing the twelve windows of the ball-room, where the six cots were set up, giving it the look of a hospital ward, Kenneth said. Hal liked it and was in high spirits. Five had accepted his invitation, and were coming the next day. There was Tom Haynes from Lexington and Jim Drake from Louisville. There was George and Charlie Browne, brothers, from Boston, and Peter Pond, from he hardly knew where, except that he wasEnglish, and a big swell with plenty of money. He did not know him personally, but the Brownes did, and vouched for him, and that was enough.
These were the five young men who landed at the Millville station on a summer morning in July. Hal was there to meet them with two open carriages, and the greetings were rather boisterous as four of them seized Harry’s hand, calling him “Old Boy” and introducing the stranger as “Peter the Great.” He was a little dapper man, whose head was far too large for his small body, and whose light summer attire was faultless. He wore a monocle part of the time, and at once made use of it to look at Harry, assuring him that he intended to enjoy himself immensely. They were a jolly set, and the people near the station came to their doors to look at them as they talked and laughed and collected their dressing-cases, hand-bags, fishing tackle, guns, gymnasium clubs, a guitar, a violin and a mandolin, and two boxes marked “Glass,” all of which were piled into an express wagon which Harry called up.
“Now for Liberty Hall,” they said, as they took their seats in the carriage, giving, as they drove off, a college yell, the loud “Rah-rah-rah’s” making the people watching them wonder if they were crazy, and how the deacon and his wife would stand them for a week if they continued as noisy as they had commenced.
The deacon wondered, too, when he saw them alight and heard their shouts and jokes as they looked about them.
“I don’t know for sure, but I guess we or’to go overand welcome ’em. They are not exactly our company, but they are Hal’s,” Mrs. Stannard said to the deacon, urging him until, against his will, he started with her across the street.
Hal did not see them coming, but Charlie Browne did, and said to him, “Look, you are going to have a call. Who are the old coves coming up the walk?”
In a moment young Browne saw his mistake in Harry’s face, which was scarlet. He had wondered what his city friends would think of his uncle and aunt, of whom in his heart he was ashamed. Still if he had his house party he must have his uncle and aunt, too, and he had prepared the way somewhat by explaining that they were old-fashioned people of the pure New England type, but the best and kindest-hearted couple in the world. And here was Charlie Browne, the toniest one of the lot, calling them “old coves” and asking who they were. Rallying all the manhood there was in him, he answered curtly: “Those ‘old coves’ are my uncle and aunt, Deacon and Mrs. Stannard, the best people on earth, and worth half a dozen such cads as I am.”
“By George, I’ve put my foot in it,” Charlie said to himself, but he was equal to the emergency. “Of course. I just glanced at them. I see now, and they are the counterparts of my grandfather and grandmother. I shall be glad to know them.”
The deacon and his wife were in the hall by this time and being presented to the young men, who, having heard of Charlie’s blunder, smothered their laugh in time to be very gracious, declaring themselves delighted to meet Hal’s uncle and aunt, whomthey hoped to know more intimately. Mrs. Stannard was completely won over, hoping they would be comfortable, and telling them if they wanted anything to call upon her. As she was leaving, her eye fell upon the two boxes marked “Glass.”
“For pity’s sake,” she said, in a loud whisper to Harry. “If they hain’t brought their looking-glass with ’em! There warn’t an atom of need. I sent one over, you know, and could send another as well as not. Better not undo ’em if they are nicely packed.” If Hal’s face had been scarlet when his aunt was called an “old cove,” it was purple now. He knew what was in the boxes, and that the sight of it would shock the old lady, who was the strongest kind of a W. C. T. U. A lie in what he thought a good cause was nothing to him, and getting her gradually to the door, he said: “It is not a mirror. It is Warner’s Safe Cure, which Tom has to take.”
“Oh,” his aunt rejoined, looking commiseratingly at Tom, who stood with his back to her, shaking with laughter. “Is it kidney? I have a splendid recipe for that, better than forty Warner’s; or maybe the doctor can give him something.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll let you know,” Hal said, getting rid of her as soon as possible.
Then he turned to his companions and found the hall empty. The mirror and kidney business had been the last straw, and the young men had hurried through the rear door of the hall out upon the grounds, where four of them were holding their sides, and “Peter the Great,” or “Little Pondy,” as he was more often called, was hopping up and down, firston one foot then upon the other, with his monocle, which had dropped from his eye, swinging in front of him like a pendulum.
“Rich!” he said. “I am beginning to enjoy myself immensely. Would she turn us out bag and baggage if she knew it was ‘Oh-be-joyful’?”
“Not from my house,” Hal answered, with an air of proprietorship; “but she is a strict temperance woman, and we’d better not let her know, if we can help it.”
Pondy, to whom the wine belonged, and who was the fastest of the set and the least of a gentleman, notwithstanding his wealth, looked askance. Dinner without wine would hardly be dinner, though he might perhaps get along with beer and visit the boxes afterward.
“The old lady will let me have beer, won’t she?” he asked.
“You mean my aunt, Mrs. Stannard?” Hal said, with a great deal of dignity, for the “old lady” offended him.
Pondy saw it and hastened to say: “Certainly, I beg your pardon. I mean your aunt, of course. It was a slip of the tongue. If you think best we’ll put the boxes in the cellar, where we can take a private nip now and then, and on our last night have the bottles up with a regular blow out. What do you say, boys?”
Instantly there went up a cheer for Little Pondy and the private nips.
“Won’t be much left for a blow-out,” Tom said, “but I vote we put the stuff in the cellar.”
It did not take long to carry the boxes there and unpack the bottles and uncork one of them for the little nips, which Pondy took on the spot, to sample it, he said. As they emerged from the cellar Kenneth came into the hall. He had been visiting some patients a few miles away and just returned. If the young men had been inclined to make fun of the “old coves,” they had no such idea with regard to the fine-looking man whom Hal introduced as “My cousin, Dr. Stannard.”
They were expecting to see a common country doctor, and were not prepared for the ease and dignity with which Kenneth met them.
He did not say he was glad to see them, but he was courteous and polite, and said he hoped they would enjoy themselves.
“Thanks,” little Pondy replied. “We are going to enjoy ourselves immensely.”
This enjoying himself immensely was his favorite expression, used on all occasions, and to all appearance he did enjoy himself as the days went on, especially after a visit to the cellar and the little nip which he took oftener than his companions thought good for him. “The painting red,” which had been predicted, was mostly done in the house, for as a rule the young men were very quiet outside, especially on the two occasions when they went to the village and sat upon the steps of the hotel, “the dryest place he ever saw,” little Pondy said, after trying the bar and finding nothing stronger than Vichy, Apollinaris and Soda Water. He had ordered ale from Rocky Point, and with this and visits to the cellar, in which his companionssometimes joined, he managed to enjoy himself. There were long drives in the country and sails and fishing on the pond and hunting in the woods, and the young men wore colored shirts and sweaters and big hats, and sometimes had their sleeves rolled up and shirt collars open and looked like anything but swells.
Two or three times Mrs. Stannard questioned Tom as to his improvement with Warner’s Cure, and once suggested that he give Kenneth’s pills a trial, or her recipe, which had cured the deacon of the worst kind of kidney trouble. With the utmost gravity Tom assured her that Warner was doing wonders for him, and told her that if there was a drawback he would try her recipe.
“Well-mannered young men, if they do look like tramps in their old clothes when they come in from fishin’ and huntin’,” she said to Kenneth, “but I don’t like their smokin’ all the time; why, I’ve actually seen it come out of the parlor winder when they are all at it. ’Tain’t good for ’em, and you or’to tell ’em so.”
Kenneth shook his head and said: “Better let the smoke alone. If they do nothing worse than that I shall be glad.”
He knew about the boxes in the cellar. The joke was too good for little Pondy to keep, and he had let it out, declaring the fun “immense,” and asking Kenneth to take a “nip” with him. It was not often that Kenneth joined them. He was too busy during the day, and in the evening too tired, he said, when his mother urged him to go over and call. He didgo once or twice, and found them playing cards for small stakes, drinking beer and smoking until the room was blue and he could scarcely breathe.
They asked him to take a hand and a drink, or a pipe, as he preferred, but he declined all three, and after sitting awhile, took his leave without a very strong invitation to stay from any of the party.
“He’s no fun at all; don’t smoke, nor play, nor drink, nor enjoy himself,” Pondy said, after Kenneth had gone, and yet in his little soul he felt how infinitely superior to himself Kenneth was, and much the same feeling permeated the crowd, each one of whom felt under restraint when he was with them, and relieved at his absence.
They had followed Hal’s instructions, and were very quiet when at midnight they stole up the outside stairs to their cots in the ball-room. Once, when little Pondy had enjoyed himself too much, he plunged into bed with his clothes on, but was promptly dragged out and made to undress, while he kept saying thickly, “I don’t—call—this—enshoying my—shelf by a —— shight.” After that he kept pretty straight in the ball-room, with the exception of once smoking in bed and setting fire to the sheets. The blaze was extinguished, and as the sheets belonged to Hal, they were taken away, and Mrs. Stannard never knew how near she came to a conflagration. The next morning Pondy complained of a headache, the result, he said, of certain hard blows aimed, he supposed, at the burning sheets, but which by accident missed fire and hit him. A drive would do him good. Not a noisy thing like those they had taken in a carryall, when they hadsung college songs and given college yells, which made the people think they were lunatics on their way to the asylum. He’d like a quiet drive with Charlie Browne, after that pretty little bay mare he’d seen going in and out of the deacon’s yard.
“Con, I heard the doctor call her. That’s a funny name for a horse. His girl’s, maybe,” and he looked at Harry, who did not reply at once.
He knew the reason for the horse’s name and respected Kenneth’s confidence so far as not to speak of it to his friends, and especially to Pondy, who had made so many boasts of his conquests.
“And I don’t care for a soul of ’em, except one,” he had said, “and I shouldn’t care for her if she hadn’t sat down on me and called me an insolent little cur when I made some advances to her she didn’t like; tried to take her hand, you know, when we were riding in a diligence near Spezzia after dark.”
“Served you right! Who is she? What’s her name?” was asked, but Pondy shook his head.
“Sha’n’t tell,” he said, “till we have our blow-out and finish Warner’s Safe Cure. Then we’ll each drink to the prettiest girl we ever saw.”
Spying Kenneth just then in the yard, he went out to him and asked for the bay mare for a short drive with Charlie.
“Sha’n’t be gone much over an hour. Head aches, and I want some exercise.”
Kenneth hesitated a moment. This was the first favor any of the party had asked of him. Con had nothing to do that day, as he was to make his calls on his wheel. It seemed ungracious not to let her go,and he finally consented, with sundry charges as to her treatment.
“No whip; no urging, as she is very free, and needs holding back even when going up hill,” he said.
“All right, I’ll be careful of her as if she were your girl,” Pondy replied, with a laugh, as he drove from the yard with Charlie Browne beside him.
Two hours later, when Kenneth came back from his calls, Pondy had not returned. Half an hour went by and he was beginning to feel anxious, when there was the sound of fast-coming wheels and Con came swiftly up the steep hill, her head held high, her eyes and nostrils extended and her sides covered with flecks of white foam.
“I tell you, she’s a ‘corker,’” Pondy said, as he fell rather than stepped from the buggy. “I’m mush oblige, an’ have ’joyed myshelf ’mensely.”
“Which is more than can be said of the horse. What did you do to her?” Kenneth answered, as he began to unharness the trembling animal, who rubbed her head against his arm with a low whinny, as if she would tell him what had been done.
Pondy saw he was offended, and began, in a half-tipsy way, to explain that he had done nothing but chirp to her a little and pull the reins, and once hit her a cut just to see how fast she could go, “and, by Shorge, couldn’t schtop her at all; went up hill an’ down as if the devil was behind her!” he said.
“As I think he was,” Kenneth replied, leading the horse to the stable, followed by Charlie Browne, who used some strong language with regard to Pondy. “Took with him a bottle of whiskey,” he said, “andsoon became a drivelling fool, urging the horse to her utmost speed, and finally gave her a smart cut with the whip. After that there was no restraining her, and she came home like the wind, a distance of ten miles from where they turned round, making in all a twenty mile drive in little over two hours on one of the hottest days in summer.”
This was Charlie’s account, and after he left, Kenneth stayed a long time with his horse, rubbing her down and talking to her as if she could understand what he said and know he was indignant. And every tender, loving word he said to her and every caress he gave her was more for the Connie over the sea than for her. He called her Connie two or three times, and wondered what the real Connie would think of the house-party, and especially of Pondy.
The “blow-out” was to come off the next night; the last of the young men’s stay at the Corners. Two choice spirits from Rocky Point had been invited and had accepted. Kenneth was also included in the invitations and wanted to decline, but thought better of it, and at eight, the appointed hour, presented himself at the Morris house, where he found the young men in evening dress and looking very different from the tramps his mother had called them when they came from hunting and fishing, in their sweaters and big hats. A caterer had been hired from Millville, with orders to do his best, and the table was laid with handsome linen and china and glasses, three at each plate, showing that the “nips” held out, or more had been bought, and were to form a prominent part of the dinner. There were ten courses, and Pondy, whohad insisted upon bearing all the expense and was master of ceremonies, had ordered that they be served very slowly, as he wished the festivities prolonged until after midnight. He was enjoying himself immensely as usual, and for a time kept pretty sober, never even raising his eyebrows, and only saying under his breath to the man on his right hand, “Chacun a son goût,” when Kenneth turned down his glass as the wine was offered him.
It flowed pretty freely with the others, and by the time the tenth course was served there were plenty of corks and empty bottles lying round, and Pondy could scarcely sit straight in his chair. The caterer had finished his work and was packing his dishes in the kitchen, while one or two waiters lingered in the dining-room, when Pondy, scarcely knowing what he was doing, began: “Ladiesh and shentlemen. No, I meansh shentlemen. We have enshoyed ourshelves immenshly, and now we comsh to the feasth of reashon and flow of—of—What do you call the d—— shtuff?”
“Wine,” some one suggested, and he went on: “Yesh, wine; but that don’t sound like it, but wine ish better to drink the healths of our prettiest girl. Doc, you sthart her, and if you don’t like wine, take water, only drink. Here you, waitah, fill high glasch.”
“In my profession I see so many pretty girls that I do not like to make a choice, so I pass,” Kenneth said, laughingly.
“All right,Chacun a son goûtagain,” Pondy replied, while the other young men, one after another,gave the name of some girl and drank to her health.
“My turn now, and I shall beat the crowd,” Pondy said, rising from his chair, and steadying himself between it and the table. “Get up, pleash,” he continued, “we must drink to her shtanding, and fill to the brim; here, waitah.”
The glasses were filled, and the men stood up, the two from Rocky Point holding on to the table, as they were rather shaky by this time.
“Now, one, two, three, and here she goesh,” Pondy said, and then rang out loud and clear, “Miss Consthance Elliott.”
There was a crash, a broken glass and water spilled over the cloth, while Kenneth’s face was white as death.
“Hallo, what’s the row? Have I sthruck your girl? Do you know her?” Pondy asked, while his companions stood staring at Kenneth with their wine untouched.
“I know her, yes; she is, or was, my father’s ward,” Kenneth replied, his voice trembling with the indignation he felt at hearing Connie’s name on the lips of the little drunken jackanapes, who answered: “Then you know a deuced pretty girl, if she did call me an insholent cur.”
“Oh,” a chorus of voices chimed in, as the guests put down their glasses and resumed their seats. “So she is the girl who snubbed you. Tell us about it and where you met her.”
Either the mention of Connie, or the threatening look in Kenneth’s eyes, partially sobered Pondy, who replied more naturally than he had been talking for some time.
“I met her in France and Italy. She was with her aunt, a hawk-eyed woman, and I didn’t think either of ’em hankered for my company. But, ’pon my shoul, the girl was such a shtunner that I would keep with ’em. I’d heard American girls were eashy going, and once in a diligence, when I shat next to her and it wash darkish, and her bare hand lay on her lap, looking so white and shoft, I just touched it, kinder friendly, you know, to shee what she would do. I’d held another girl’s hand five minutes, or more, but, my Lord! I believe thish one would have throttled me on the shpot if there had not been others in the diligence and she hated a schene. She never spoke to me again, and her aunt forbade my speaking to either of them. All the shame, she’s a beauty, and a catch for some of you chaps. Plenty of tin, they shay. Here’s to her health! Constance Elliott.”
He drank it alone, with the exception of the two choice spirits from Rocky Point. The rest of the party were watching Kenneth, whose fists were clenched and whose eyes were blazing with anger. He, however, sat still while the hilarity went on, and songs were sung and stories told and college yells were given and cigars and pipes were smoked and wine was drank, until Pondy was beside himself, and by way of emphasizing his good time threw his glass across the room at Mrs. Stannard’s mirror. The noise seemed to intensify his enjoyment and make him wild. A second glass went after the first, and a third would have followed if Harry and Charlie Browne had not interfered.
Taking advantage of this diversion, Kenneth leftthe feast, which lasted till after midnight. In the morning, when the sun looked into the dining-room at the Morris house, it saw broken bottles and wine glasses and stained linen and the one-hundred-year-old mirror, with scarcely a whole piece in it. Pondy, who had grown unmanageable, had again made it his target, calling it sometimes the “old lady” and again the “W. C. T. U.” At last, when there was nothing more in his reach to throw, he fell out of his chair under the table, where his comrades left him after several ineffectual efforts to get him up.
“Lem-me-be,” he said. “I’m ’joying myshelf ’mensely, and I won’t go home till morning. Wha’s that doctor? He didn’t like my squeezin’ the girl’s hand. Three sheers for her.”
He tried to give the cheers, but they died in his throat, and he was soon sleeping like a log, his last words being, “G’way, I’m ’joying myshelf ’mensely.”
About nine o’clock seven shame-faced young men packed up their belongings and departed, after offering to pay Mrs. Stannard for the loss of her mirror. But she declined with some spirit. She had looked upon the scene of the carousal with wide-eyed consternation.
“I thought they was gentlemen, and ’stead of that they was rowdies,” she said, as she took all there was left of her mirror and carried it home, a sadder and wiser woman.
It had belonged to her grandmother, and money could not pay for it; neither could the long, handsome, gilt-framed mirror which came to her within a week from Pondy quite replace it. But it did agood deal towards it. He had been profuse in his apologies, and his companions had denounced him to her as a fool and idiot, with whom they were through. And she had agreed with them until the expensive mirror came, when she weakened a little in his favor, saying she presumed it did not take as much to affect him as it did the others. He was a small man, and very little would upset him. It was a great shock to her to know that Warner’s Safe Cure was wine, and that Harry had helped to drink it, and nothing but his promise to sign the pledge availed to comfort her. He stayed at home two or three weeks after his house party, and seemed most of the time to be in a brown study. No reference was made by either Kenneth or himself to Connie until the day before he started for Boston. Then he asked, with apparent indifference: “By the way, Ken, do you know where that girl is whose health that puppy drank?”
“You mean Connie?” Kenneth said; and Hal replied, “Yes, Connie Elliott. Is she still abroad?”
Kenneth supposed so, although they rarely heard from her.
“She is quite an heiress, isn’t she?” was Harry’s next question.
“She will be if the mine in which she has a good deal of stock begins to pay, as it may,” Kenneth replied, and there the conversation ended, and the next day Harry left for Boston, telling his aunt he was going to buckle down to hard work and make something of himself, and some money, too, which he needed badly.
CHAPTER XAT INTERLAKEN
It was just a year after the blow-out, and near the close of a lovely afternoon among the Alps, whose tall peaks cut the sky like needles in some points and again spread out in a broad snow-clad surface, glistening in the sunshine like flames of fire, and shining like a sea of glass. Along the mountain road which leads from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen two young people were slowly walking. They had been out for two or three miles, and were returning to the little village over which the Jungfrau keeps watch. They had turned aside from the principal thoroughfare into a circuitous path by the side of a brook which, fed by the glaciers above, went rippling over stones with a musical sound, very soothing in that quiet spot and at that hour of the day. Behind them as they walked was the great mountain which greets you at so many points in Switzerland, and nowhere more cheerily than in the vicinity of Interlaken. Before them were the roofs of the town, while across the fields came the tinkle of the cow bells and faintly in the distance was the echo of an Alpine horn, blown for the benefit of some tourists. It was just the hour and place for love making, and that something of this kind was in progress was evident in the faces of the young couple.He was a handsome young man, with dark hair and eyes, and a voice and smile which seldom failed to win the hearts of strangers. The girl was like a lovely flower, tall and slender, blue eyed and fair, but with a troubled look upon her face and in her eyes, on whose long lashes tears were standing. There had been a pause in their walk just where the brook made a dash over a pile of rocks and fell with a splash into the basin below. Here on a huge bowlder they sat and exchanged vows the nature of which the girl did not understand, except that they bound her to the man who had power to thrill her every nerve and make her as clay in his hands.
Connie, for it was she, had seen much of the world in one way, but was still a child in another, trusting with her whole soul where she trusted and seeing no fault in those she loved. Her close convent life had kept her ignorant of many things it might have been well for her to know. For a year or more she had been free from the restraint of school and had travelled from place to place with her aunt, doing everywhere the same thing,—a little sight-seeing, a good deal of shopping, and driving, dressing fortable-d’hôte, where she met the same people night after night and heard the same flow of gossip. Told repeatedly how beautiful she was, sought in marriage, by some whose advances she felt to be an insult, and flattered by all till she was tired of it and longed for some quiet place where there was no sham and everything was real. Many times her thoughts had turned to the farmhouse with a longing to go there again,and her heart always beat faster when she recalled the moonlit evening when she sat with Kenneth on the stone wall and said things to him she would scarcely dare say now that she was older. That she did not hear from the Stannards often was her own fault, for her letters were always promptly answered. She had been so busy in school and since, and she disliked letter writing.
She was nearly twenty-two and her own mistress now, with no need to call upon the deacon and no necessity for writing, except for friendship’s sake. But somehow the farmhouse and its inmates, and especially Kenneth, were very distinct in her mind as she walked with this young man, who held her hand as if he had a right to it, and was not spurned as Pondy had been when he touched it in the diligence. He had come into her life at Lucerne, just when she was sick of everything and disgusted with a persistent offer of marriage from a sleepy-eyed Count Costello, many years her senior. She disliked him and was glad when a new comer, over whom the young girls in the hotel were raving, sought her from all the rest. From the first her aunt, who favored Costello and a title, had set her face against him, but it did not matter. Love’s fire was kindled and the light and warmth were very sweet to the trusting, innocent girl. Her lover had followed her to Interlaken, where their acquaintance ripened fast, and they were taking their last walk together, for early the next morning he was to leave for Paris, where friends were awaiting him.
“Remember,” he said, as they neared the hotel, “it is till death do us part.”
“Yes, till death do us part,” she replied, wondering why there came such a tightness about her heart, as if a cold hand had clutched it.
He bade her good-bye that night, after dinner in one of the shadowy corners of the big hotel.
“Remember,” he said again, and raised her hand to his lips.
Through the leaves of a climbing vine the moonbeams filtered and fell upon her face which he would like to have kissed, but something restrained him, and afterward, when the awakening came, Connie thanked God that it was so.
“I will remember,” she said, withdrawing her hand, just as round the corner came the rustle of skirts and Mrs. Hart appeared in view, with Count Costello in attendance, smirking into her face just as he had smirked in Connie’s six weeks ago.
Something in their looks smote Connie like a blow, making her sick at heart, and she walked away and left them alone. The next morning, when the early stage left the hotel, a pair of soft, blue eyes looked eagerly up at a window from which a white hand was waving an adieu. Then the stage rolled away, and Connie was alone with the memory of what had been and was soon to be again in its full fruition, she believed. That morning her aunt had said to her: “I am glad he has gone. I never liked him, and I read people pretty well. I have no doubt you attracted him, but it was your money he wanted. Give him a plainer face with more money, and he would take it.”
“Money!” Connie repeated. “I am sick of the sound, and I certainly have not enough to make me an object for fortune-hunters. I wish you would manage to have people, and even him, think me poor; then I shall know who likes me for myself.”
Her aunt made no reply, but that afternoon she wrote a letter to Paris, which was to bear early fruit. Meanwhile the days passed with the usual round of nothings for Connie, who tired of them all. Old men and young plied her with attentions, which she received graciously, but coldly, biding her time and counting the days which must elapse before she heard from him, or he came back to claim her. But he neither came nor wrote, except a few lines from Paris, saying that he had reached there safely and was with his friends at the Grand. Mrs. Hart had not intended to stop much longer in Interlaken, but she kept lingering, declaring herself infatuated with the place and seemingly infatuated with Count Costello, who had transferred his attentions from the niece to the aunt. Every day Connie waited anxiously for the western mails, but only to be disappointed, and the bright color began to fade from her cheeks, and the lustre from her eyes. Twice she walked out to the boulder by the brook, and sitting down upon it, tried to recall every word he had said to her and what she had said to him. Once she knelt by the rock and prayed that he might come, but God, who knew better than she what was for her good, did not answer her prayer, and her eyes grew larger and more sunken, and her figure lost its symmetrical proportions, untilher aunt awoke to the fact that her health was failing. Thinking heroic treatment the best, she one day said abruptly: “If you are pining for that young man, you may as well give him up. The Count has friends in Paris, who write that your friend is there, leading a gay life and very devoted to a young lady of the party.”
After that Connie drooped more and more, until by the time they left Interlaken for Geneva her life seemed to have gone from her, leaving her a pale, silent girl, with a hopeless look in her eyes pitiful to see in one so young. Absolutely true herself, and a child in many things, owing to her convent training, it was hard to imagine deception in any one whom she trusted, and doubly so in him who, if he were alive and well, had deceived her cruelly. She might write to him, for she knew his address, but she was too proud to do that. If he had ceased to care for her, she would make no sign and bear her pain as best she could. Geneva was a little diversion, as she was never tired of the beautiful lake, or of watching the lights and shadows of Mt. Blanc in the distance. She would like to have stayed there all the autumn, but her aunt said no,—her health required the balmy air of Genoa, where Costello had invited them to stop at his palace.
“Oh, Auntie,” Connie cried in dismay, “you surely will not go there!”
“Why not?” was the sharp question, and Connie replied:
“It does not seem proper for two lone women to become the guests of Count Costello, when there are so many hotels and pensions in Genoa.”
“I shall not go as his guest, but as his wife,” was the rejoinder.
“His wife! You? Oh, Auntie!” and Connie sprang to her feet, and then sank pale and trembling into her chair.
She knew her aunt’s fondness for titles, and had seen her growing intimacy with the count, but had never quite believed that it would come to this, that her proud aunt would take one whom she had refused. It was strange, but like many another foolish woman, Mrs. Hart had been won by the glamor of a title and the oily tongue of the Italian, who boasted connection with some of the first families in Italy and Florence. He had a villa in the latter city and a palace in Genoa, and when his wife tired of these, there was her house in New York, where they could spend a portion of each year. Mrs. Hart was a handsome, well-preserved woman of forty-five. The count was only a year or two her junior. He had no bad habits that she knew of, and was very good tempered. He had been devoted to Connie, but had seen the folly of aspiring to the hand of one so young. Mrs. Hart, in her maturity, would suit him better, and be an ornament in the high circles to which he would introduce her. These and similar arguments prevailed, and after yards and yards of “red tape,” the marriage ceremony was performed in Geneva some time in October, and Mrs. Hart was the Countess Costello.
It was a very kind, fatherly air which Costello assumed towards Connie, who, if there had been a spot upon earth to which she could flee, would not have gone with the newly-wedded pair. But there wasnone except the farmhouse where she felt sure she would be welcome. But if she went to America she might lose her chance of hearing fromhim, and she had not yet given up all hope. She meant to stay in Europe and take her chance. The journey to Genoa was made very slowly, for the countess was not at all averse to showing herself as a countess to her countrymen at different hotels, and the count was in no hurry to reach his palace. He was very happy at Monte Carlo, where he played for high stakes, winning some and losing more, and asking his bride to pay his losses, as he was a little short of funds. She paid them, as well as some of their hotel bills, and said nothing. She was a countess. Her marriage had been heralded in the New York papers, and commented upon as one more instance of a fair American winning a title from all foreign competitors. Costello was a devoted husband, and she was happy and rather anxious to reach the palace of which she was to be mistress. The count had told her that it was a good deal run down and lacked the cheery air of American houses, and he would have given orders to have it repaired if he had not thought she would rather see to it herself. She was free to do whatever she liked.
What Mrs. Hart had in her mind she hardly knew. Certainly not the tall, gloomy house on one of the dark streets of Genoa, so narrow that as you look ahead the buildings seem almost to touch each other.
“Oh, is it here?” she whispered under her breath, as the carriage stopped at the door and the count said, very gayly:
“Here we are, my dear. Home at last.”
It was something that a lackey in faded livery came out to meet them, while old Annunciata, who had been in the family for years as head servant, curtesied nearly to the floor to her new mistress. It was November and the wind was blowing cold through the street, where no sunlight ever fell, and Mrs. Hart was chilled to the bones, while Connie was shaking from her head to her feet. But there were fires in the salon and in the bedrooms, and the count ordered hot tea and biscuits and claret to be sent to the ladies, whose disappointment he read in their faces.
“The villa in Florence is not like this. Wait till we get there,” he said, bustling about and trying to make them comfortable.
When she had drank her tea and was warm, Mrs. Hart began to look around her with some curiosity. Everything was old and faded, but rich in its way, and telling of a past when the Costellos held their heads among the best in the city. The count had not deceived her in that respect. His palace might be no better than a barn, but his family, though poor, was all he had represented it to be. He, too, was very kind, and in his own house assumed a dignity he had before lacked. A few of his acquaintances called, and were especially kind to Connie, who, had she chosen, might have been a belle in the Costello society, but she disliked the Italians. She disliked Genoa and the dark, dull old house, with the punctilious etiquette the count required from his wife and herself and his three servants, who were required to do the work of six. Occasionally she had bits of newsfrom the outside world, but no letter reached her, and she ceased at last to expect one. Deserted, was the bitter thought always present with her, and the soft air of Italy failed to bring back the color to her cheeks and the brightness to her eyes, and thus the winter wore on until March, when they went to Florence, where they found the Costello villa in better repair than the palace in Genoa had been. There were many Americans in the city, and Connie always scanned them curiously, hoping for a face she never found, either there or elsewhere during the summer, a part of which was spent in Paris and a part in Switzerland, but not at Interlaken. The countess did not care to go there, and for Connie there were so many sad memories connected with it that she loathed the thought of seeing it again. The count was fond of travel, and as his wife’s money held out they moved from place to place during the autumn and winter, until the first of February found them again in Genoa, nearly a year after they had left it.
Old Annunciata and her husband had been left to keep the house in their mistress’s absence, and welcomed the family back. Annunciata, who could manage a little English, was very fond of Connie, and had given special care to the arrangement of her room, which, she said, had been thoroughly cleansed in every nook and corner, even to moving the big clothes-press, a thing which did not often happen. “And under it I found this,” she said, handing Connie a newspaper, which must have come nearly a year before, just after the family went to Florence, and by some mischance had been dropped on the floor andpushed under the press, where it lay until Annunciata’s cleaning brought it to light. It was a London paper, addressed in a strange hand, sent first to her Paris address, 7 Rue Scribe, from which place it had been forwarded to her at Genoa. It did not seem to contain anything of interest as she glanced over its pages. Then her eyes fell upon a few lines with a faint pencil mark around them, and she read that on January 15th there was married in St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, Charles H. Morris, of Boston, Mass., to Miss Catherine Haynes, of Lexington, Kentucky, U. S. A.
It was a simple announcement of a year ago, and did not affect Connie at all as she read it, wondering who the parties were and why a notice of their marriage should be sent to her and by whom. Haynes was a new name, while Morris seemed familiar, and suddenly she remembered where she had heard it, and the Morris house at The 4 Corners came back to her, with Kenneth, who had told her of his cousin. This Charles H. might be the same. She had never met him and did not know he was in Europe, nor did it matter. His marriage was nothing to her. And yet there was something about that notice which kept her looking at it, while thoughts of the farmhouse and Kenneth and the old couple crowded her brain with an intense longing to see them again.
“And why not?” she asked herself. “I am my own mistress. Why should I stay in this dreary place when there is America, so large and bright and free? My aunt is seemingly happy with her new home and husband. She will not miss me much, and there isno reason why I should not go,” she thought, and she at once communicated her wish to her aunt, who opposed it strongly, while the count was still more vehement in his opposition, and it was this which decided her at last.
Alone with her he expressed himself more fully, saying that the sight of her fair young face made his home brighter than it would otherwise be, and he could not let her go. He offered no endearment, only his eyes told what he felt, and Connie turned from him in disgust, resolved now upon her future course. She would take her maid, who was a French girl, with her to Paris, leave her there, sail alone from Havre to New York, and go at once to the Stannards, if they would have her. From this nothing could dissuade her, neither her aunt’s protests nor the count’s soft, pleading words, which made her more determined than ever to get away from a place she hated. She was going to America, and before her aunt fully realized the fact she had left Genoa, and the first ship bound for New York which sailed from Havre in March took her with it,—a white-faced, lone girl, who was sick most of the time, but comforted herself with the thought that she was going home to America and the farmhouse and Kenneth. He was the central figure, whom she always saw in the foreground and through whom comfort would somehow come. She had no doubt of her welcome, and within an hour after she reached New York and her hotel, she sent a telegram to Kenneth, saying:
“Arrived on steamer this morning. Shall be at Millville station to-night.