CHAPTER IIISMOLDERING EMBERS
Rosamund’s marriage was set for the end of May. There had been great preparations for the event, which was to be the most brilliant one of its kind that had ever taken place in the town or state. A costly trousseau had been ordered from San Francisco. It was understood that the wedding breakfast was to come from the same place and be the most sumptuous and elaborate ever given in Virginia. Men heard these rumors with surprise and once more wondered where Allen was getting the money “to splurge with.” Even the astute Graceys were puzzled. Only the Colonel was non-committal and looked on quietly.
“Rosamund’s going to have the finest send-off I can give her,” Allen said to him a week before the wedding. “It’s the best I can do for her. It’s a good thing Harrower’s only here for a few days.”
The Colonel felt like adding it was an extremely good thing, as otherwise Harrower might be called upon to pay for the splendor of his own nuptials. Twenty-five thousand dollars would not go far with a man, who, with debts pressing on every side, wasspending money as Allen was in giving Rosamund a fine “send-off.”
A week before the day set Harrower arrived and took up his residence at the International Hotel. It was a feverish, over-crowded week, full of bustle and fussy excitement. There were people constantly at the Murchison mansion and Allen was constantly out of it. Had Harrower been more versed in the ways of the American parent he would have realized that his future father-in-law was avoiding him. But the young man, who thought everything in the place curious and more or less incomprehensible, regarded his behavior as merely another evidence of the American father’s habit of letting his children manage their own affairs. He did not like Allen and wanted as quickly as possible to get through the spectacular marriage, and take Rosamund away to the peace of his ancestral acres and the simple country life they both loved.
To June this last week was a whirl of days and nights, reeling by over a dragging, ceaseless sense of pain. To both girls the separation was bitter, but Rosamund, passing into the arms of an adored husband, for the first time in a life of unselfishness, did not enter into her sister’s feelings. She spoke often of the visit June was to pay them next winter. Lionel was as anxious as Rosamund for her to come. The bride and groom were to travel on the continent for part of the summer and then visit his people, introducing Rosamund to her new relations. But by November they would be settled in Monk’s Court—that was Lionel’s home—and then June wasto come. Rosamund even hinted at a cousin of Lionel’s, a “very decent chap” Lionel had said, who was rich and single and “just the right sort for June.”
There were six months between now and then, six short months to Rosamund beginning a brilliant new life with her lover; and six long months to June alone in the mining city, surrounded by the gray desert.
The wedding day came and the excitement quieted down to the sudden hush of that solemn moment when the voice of a priest proclaims a man and a woman one. The ceremony was performed in the house, Lionel, after some qualms, having agreed to it. June stood beside her sister in the alcove of the bay-window and listened to the words which pledged her to a man of another country and to a life in a distant land. Rosamund was pale as she turned from the clergyman to greet the guests that pressed round her. It was a sacred moment to her, the giving of herself in its fullest and deepest significance to the man she loved, till death should part them.
It was beyond doubt a very brilliant wedding. The house, hung with flowers—every blossom sent up from San Francisco wrapped in cotton wool—lost its bare, half-furnished look and became a bower. The costumes of the women—many imported from Paris—were in all cases costly and in some beautiful. The men, who squeezed past one another on the stairway and drank champagne in corners, stood for more wealth than the whole of the far West had known till the discovery of the Cresta Plata and the Big Bonanza. The millions that the arid state was pouring out in a silver stream were well represented in the Murchison mansion that afternoon.
RosamundRosamund
Rosamund
Rosamund
The breakfast seemed to June a never-ending procession of raised champagne glasses and toasts. She had a vision of the Colonel’s white head bent toward Rosamund over the low-bowled, thin-stemmed glass in which the golden bubbles rose, and of the husky note in his voice as he wished her joy. She saw her father, with reddened face and bloodshot eyes, rise to his feet, and with the southern fervency of phrase, which he had never lost, bid his daughter God-speed and farewell, the glass shaking in his hand. Harrower stood up beside his bride, her listening face fair and spiritual between the drooping folds of her veil, and said a few words of thanks, halting and simple, but a man’s words nevertheless.
Then the time came for the bride to go up stairs for the change of dress. The guests made a path for her, and June followed the tall figure with its long, glimmering train.
They said little as Rosamund took off her wedding finery and donned her traveling dress. But at the door of the room they clasped each other in a dumb embrace, neither daring to speak. As she descended Rosamund drew her veil down to hide her tears. Her lips were quivering, her heart was rent with the pain of the parting. June came behind her, calm and dry-eyed, the bleak sense of depression that she had felt for weeks closing round her black and heavy. Part of herself—the strong, brave part—seemed to be torn away from her with the going of the sister, upon whom she had always leaned.
She stood on the balcony and waved her hand as the carriages drove away toward the station. Most of the guests went with them to see the bride and groom off. A stream of people poured down the stairs, laughing, chattering, calling back good-bys to June, as she stood by the door, pale but resolutely smiling. She noticed the three tall figures of the Colonel and the Gracey brothers as they crossed the street together, the Colonel turning to wave his hand to her. Her father had gone before them. Finally everybody had left, and she turned slowly back into the deserted house.
How empty is was! Her footsteps echoed in it. She passed into the parlor, into which, from the broad bay-window the afternoon light poured coldly. Linen had been stretched over the carpet, and on this white and shining expanse the broken heads of roses and torn leaves lay here and there. The flowers in the recess where the bride and groom had stood were already fading, and the air was heavy with their dying sweetness.
She looked into the dining-room at the expanse of the rifled table, where the mounds of fruit had been broken down by eager hands and the champagne bubbles rose languidly in the half-filled glasses. There were no servants about and the perfect silence of the house was more noticeable in this scene of domestic disorder. She had ascended the stairs and was looking out of a back window when she saw its explanation. From the kitchen entrance the servants, headed by the chef brought up from San Francisco for thewedding, stealthily emerged. Struggling into their coats and hastily jamming on their hats they ran in straggling line in the direction of the depot, intent, as the rest of the world, on seeing the bride depart. Last of all the Chinaman issued forth, and setting his soft felt wide-awake on his carefully uprolled queue, stole with soft-footed haste after them.
Nothing can be more full of the note of human desolation than an occupied house suddenly vacated. June passed from room to room feeling the silence as part of the depression that weighed on her. Through the windows she could see the wild, morose landscape, beginning to take on the hectic strangeness of tint that marked its sunset aspect. Its weird hostility was suddenly intensified. It combined with the silence to augment her sense of loneliness to the point of the unendurable. She ran down the stairs and out on to the curve of balcony which extended from the front door.
Some children were playing in the street below, and their voices came to her with a note of cheer. Leaning listlessly against the balustrade she looked up the street, wondering when her father would be back. She had ceased to note his comings and goings, but this evening she watched for his return as she might have done in her childhood. There was no sign of him, and might not be for hours. After the train left he would probably range about the town, whose night aspect he loved.
She turned her head in the opposite direction, and her eyes became suddenly fixed and her body stiffened.A man was coming down the street, swinging lightly forward, looking over the tops of the houses toward the reddening peak of the Sugar Loaf. There was only one man in Virginia with that natural elegance of form, that carriage full of distinction and grace.
For the first moment he did not see her, and in that moment June felt none of the secret elation that had been hers in the past at sudden sight of him. Instead, a thrill of repugnance passed through her, to be followed by a shrinking dread. She moved softly back from the balustrade, intending to slip into the hallway, when he turned his head and saw her.
The old pleasure leaped into his face. She saw that he pronounced her name. He flung a cautious look about him and then crossed the road. With his hand on the gate he gazed up and said, with something of secrecy in his air and voice:
“Have they all gone?”
June’s affirmative was low. Her repugnance had vanished. Her desire to retreat had been paralyzed by the first sound of his voice.
“And they’ve left you all alone?”
The tone was soft with the caressing quality that to Jerry was second nature when an attractive woman listened.
“Yes, they went to the station to see them off. I didn’t want to go, so I stayed,” she returned stammeringly.
Jerry opened the gate.
“Can I come up?” he said in the lowest tone that would reach her ear. “I hate to think of you all by yourself up there, and Rosamund gone.”
June looked at him and murmured an affirmative that he could not have heard, but he put his foot on the lowest step. She dropped her eyes to her hands resting on the balustrade, while the beating of her heart increased with his ascending footfall. When he had reached her side she was trembling. In those few sentences from the bottom of the stairs he seemed suddenly to have obliterated the past year. The words were ordinary enough, but his eyes, his tone, his manner as he now stood beside her, were those of the old Jerry, before Mercedes had stolen him away.
She raised her eyes to his and immediately dropped them. The soft scrutiny of his gaze—the privileged gaze that travels over and dwells on a loved face, with no one to challenge its right—increased her flushed distress. Jerry, too, was moved. For both of them the moment was fraught with danger, and he knew it better than she.
“You’re all tired out,” he said, with his tender tone slightly hoarse. “Let’s go in and sit down.”
She led the way through the hall, now beginning to grow dim with the first evening shadows, into the long, bare parlor. There was a sofa drawn up against the wall and on this she sat, while Jerry placed a small gilded chair close in front of her.
“How deserted it looks!” he said, gazing about the room. “I suppose everybody was here? I saw a perfect mob of people going down to the station.”
“Yes, everybody went, even the servants. They stole away without telling me. They didn’t even wait to clear the things off the table. That’s why it’s so quiet.”
Both spoke rapidly to hide their agitation. The woman’s was more apparent than the man’s. She kept her eyes down and Jerry watched her as she spoke. It was the first time for over a year that he had had a chance to scrutinize her at will. She had changed greatly. Her freshness was gone, her face looked smaller than ever and to-day was almost haggard. But Jerry had had his fill of beauty. She loved him still, and she was the one woman of the three he had loved. Ever since Mercedes had left him he had been telling himself this, and the thought had been taking fiery possession of him, growing more dominant each day.
“Rosamund’s made a fine marriage, hasn’t she?” he went on, with more fluency. “Some day she’ll be Lady Rosamund, and won’t she be a stunning Lady Rosamund? She’s made for it. Do you remember the time when I was up at Foleys and you had the garden there? What a lot has happened in these last four years.”
“Yes, a lot,” June assented. A broken rose-bud lay on the sofa beside her. She picked it up and began to open its leaves.
“And who’d have supposed then that Rosamund was going to live in England, and some day be Lady Rosamund?” There was a slight pause, and he added in a lower voice, as if speaking to himself: “Who’d have supposed any of the things were going to happen that did?”
June pressed apart the rose petals in silence.
“Who’d have supposed I would have done thethings that I have done?” he said, speaking in the same low voice, but now it was suddenly full of significance.
He was looking directly at her. His eyes called hers, and with the rose-bud still in her hand, she looked into them for a long motionless moment. It was a look of revelation. He saw her will, like a trapped bird, fluttering and struggling in his grasp.
“You’re just the same, June,” he said on a rising breath.
“No, no,” she faltered, “I’ve changed in every way. You don’t know how I’ve changed. I’m quite a different person.”
“But you haven’t lost faith in me?” he said, leaning nearer to her.
She drew back, pressing her shoulders against the sofa, and gazing at him with a sort of suspended apprehension. He did not seem to notice her shrinking and went on impetuously:
“You understand if there were mistakes and errors and—and—and—miserable misunderstandings, that I was led into them. I was a blind fool. Mercedes never cared for me. She told me so three months after we were married. She left me of her own free will. She was glad to go, and I—well, I’ll tellyouthe truth, June—I wasn’t sorry.”
His face was full of angry confession. He had had no intention of talking to her in this way, but now he suddenly wanted to reinstate himself in her good opinion and be soothed by her sympathy. She stopped him.
“Don’t talk about it. It’s done. If you made a mistake, it’s done, and that’s the end. Oh, Jerry, don’t talk about it.”
She rose to her feet; the room was getting dim. Outside the royal dyes of sunset had faded from the sky and the twilight was softly settling.
“I’ll have to light the gas,” she stammered. “The servants haven’t come in yet. This half-light makes me blue.”
Jerry stood aside as she went to the mantel and from among the embanked flowers drew the matchbox. The chandelier hung just above his head draped with garlands of smilax. It was high and as June came forward with the lighted match, he stretched out his hand to take it from her. They were close together under the chandelier as their hands touched. Each felt the tremulous cold of the other’s fingers and the match dropped, a red spark, between them.
With suddenly-caught breath Jerry stretched his arms out to clasp her but she drew back, her hands outspread before her, crying,
“Don’t, Jerry, don’t! Oh, please don’t!”
She backed away from him and he followed her, not speaking, his face set, his arms ready to enfold her. She was stopped in her recoil by the sofa, and standing against it she looked at him, with agonized pleading, whispering,
“Don’t, Jerry. Oh, please go. Please go and leave me! You loved me once.”
He stopped, stood looking at her for a moment of stricken irresolution, then turned without a word and left the room.
June fell on the sofa, her face in her hands. She heard his step in the passage, then sharp on every stair as he ran down to the street. In the darkening room she sat trembling, her face hidden, alone in the empty house.