"Yes," she admitted, "you are very rough with me." And she sat a few moments, looking down at the floor,her little hands trembling on her lap. But presently she moved again. She pushed one of the cushions up in the sofa-arm and laid her cheek against it, with a half-sigh of weariness relieved and a half-smile.
"Go on!" she said. "After all,—since I have reflected,—I think I don't dislike it. New things always please me,—for a little while,—and this is new. No one ever spoke to me so before. I wonder whether it was because I did not really deserve it or because people were afraid?"
Tredennis stopped in the walk he had begun and wheeled sharply about, fronting her with his disproportionately stern gaze.
"Do you want to know whyIdo it?" he demanded. "I think—since I have reflected—that it is for the sake of—of the other Bertha."
There was a slight pause.
"Of the other Bertha," she said after it, in a low, unsteady tone. "Of the Bertha who thought it an impossibility that she should be anything but happy."
He had not been prepared for her replies before, but he was startled by what she did now. She left her seat with a sudden, almost impassioned, action; the cushion fell upon the floor. She put her hand upon the mantel, as if to support herself.
"Why did you say that?" she exclaimed. "I do not like it! I do not like to be reminded that it is so long since—since I was worth liking. I suppose that is what it means. Why should you seem to accuse me when you say you speak for the sake of the other Bertha? Am I so bad? You have lived a quiet life because you liked it best; I did not chance to like it best, and so I have been gay. I go out a great deal and am fond of the world, but do I neglect my children and treat my husband badly? Richard is very happy, and Jack and Janey and Meg enjoy themselves and are very fond of me. If I was careless of them, and ill-tempered to Richard, and made my home unhappy,you might accuse me. It is the most mysterious thing to me, but I always feel as if I was defending myself against you, even when you only look at me and do not speak at all. It—it is a curious position! I do not understand it, and I do not like it!"
Her sudden change of mood was a revelation to Tredennis. He began to realize what he had dimly felt from the first, that her mental attitude toward him was one of half-conscious defiance of his very thought of her. He had not known why he had felt at times that his mere presence prompted her to present her worldly, mocking little philosophies in their most incontrovertible and daring form, and that it was her whim to make the worst of herself and her theories for his benefit. He accused himself angrily in secret of overestimating his importance in her eyes, and had reiterated impatiently that there was no reason why she should be at all specially aware of his existence when he was near her, and it had been one of his grievances against himself that, in spite of this, every time they met he had felt the same thing, and had resented and been puzzled by it.
But he had never before seen her look as she looked now. One of his private sources of wonder had been the perfect self-control which restrained her from exhibiting anything approaching a shadow of real feeling upon any subject. He had seen her under circumstances which would have betrayed nine women out of ten into some slight display of irritation, and she had always maintained the airy serenity of demeanor which deprived all persons and incidents of any weight whatever when they assumed the form of obstacles, and her practicable little smile and calm impartiality of manner had never failed her. He had heard her confess that it was her chief weakness to pride herself upon her quiet adroitness in avoiding all things unpleasant or emotional, and upon her faithfulness to her resolve not to permit herself to be disturbed.
"I have seen people who enjoyed their emotions," shehad said, "but I never enjoyed mine, even when I was very young. I definitely disliked them. I am too self-conscious to give myself up to them simply. If I had one, I should think about it and analyze it and its effects upon me. I should be saying all the time, 'Now I am hot—now I am cold'; and when it was over I should be tired, not only of the feeling itself, but of taking my own temperature."
And now she stood before him for the instant a new creature,—weaker and stronger than he had dreamed it possible she could be,—her eyes bright with some strange feeling, a spot of color burning on each pale cheek. He was so bewildered and impressed that he was slow to speak, and, when he began, felt himself at so severe a disadvantage that his consciousness of it gave his voice a rigid sound.
"I do not think," he began, "that I know what to say"—
Bertha stopped him.
"There is no need that you should say anything," she interrupted. "You cannot say anything which will disapprove of me more than your expression does. And it is not you who should defend yourself, but I. But you were always severe. I remember I felt that when I was only a child, and knew that you saw all that was frivolous in me. I was frivolous then as I am now. I suppose I have a light nature,—but I do not like to be reminded of it. After all, no one is harmed but myself, and it would be charity in you to let me go my flippant way and not despise me too much."
"Bertha," he answered, "it is not for me to say that I do not despise you."
He stood with his arms folded and looked down at her steadily. It was very easy for her to place him at a disadvantage. He knew nothing of feminine ways and means, and his very masculine strength and largeness were against him. If she gave him a wound he could not strike back, or would not; and in her lastspeech she had given him more wounds than one, and they were rankling in his great breast fiercely. And yet despite this it was not she who came off entirely victor. After meeting his gaze with undeniable steadiness for a few seconds, she turned away.
"I told you," she remarked with a persistence which was its own betrayer, "that—it was not necessary for you to say anything." The next moment an impatient laugh broke from her. She held up her unsteady hand that he might see it.
"Look!" she said. "Why should I quarrel with you when you are right, after all? It is certainly time that I should rest when I am so absurdly unstrung as this. And my very mood itself is a proof that something should be done with me. For a minute or so I have actually been out of temper, or something humiliatingly like it. And I pride myself upon my temper, you know, and upon the fact that I never lose it,—or have not any to lose. I must be worn out when a few perfectly truthful speeches will make me bad-tempered. Not that I object to it on moral grounds, but it wounds my vanity to lose control of myself. And now I have reached my vanity I am quite safe. I will leave for Fortress Monroe to-morrow."
"It would be better if you went to a quieter place," he said.
"Thank you," she answered. "I think it will be quiet enough,—if I take the children, and avoid the ball-room, and am very decorous."
There seemed but little more for him to say. She changed the subject by taking from the table the paper he had brought her, and beginning to discuss its contents.
"Richard asked me to read the editorial and the letter from the Washington correspondent," she said. "He is more interested in the matter than I ever knew him to be in anything of the kind before. He is actually making it one of his objects, and flatters me bywanting to know my opinions and wishing me to share his enthusiasm." She sat down to the table, with the paper open before her and her hands lying clasped upon it.
"Have you read it?" she asked. "Is it very clever? Can I understand it? Richard is so amiably sure I can."
"It is well done," replied Tredennis, "and you will certainly understand it."
"I am glad of that," she said, and sat still a moment, with eyes lowered. Then she spoke, rather suddenly. "Richard is very good to me," she said. "I ought to be very grateful to him. It is just like him to feel that what I think of such things is worth hearing. That is his affectionate, generous way. Of what value could my shallow little fancies be?—and yet I think he really believes they should carry weight. It is the most delightful flattery in the world."
"It is your good fortune," said Tredennis, "to be able to say things well and with effect."
"What!" she said, with a half-smile, "are you going to flatter me, too?"
"No," he answered, grimly, "I am not going to flatter you."
"You would find it a very good way," she answered. "We should get along much better, I assure you. Perhaps that is really what I have been resenting so long—that you show no facility for making amiable speeches."
"I am afraid my facility lies in the opposite direction," he returned.
"I have recovered my equilibrium sufficiently not to admit that," she said.
When he went away, as he did shortly after, she followed him to the door of the room.
"Was I very bad-tempered?" she said, softly. "If I was, suppose you forgive me before you go away—for the sake of the other Bertha."
He took the hand she offered him, and looked down at it as it lay upon his big brown palm. It was feverish and still a little unsteady, though her manner was calm enough.
"There is nothing to forgive," he answered. "If there was—this Bertha"—He checked himself, and ended abruptly. "I don't share your gift," he said. "I said my say as bluntly and offensively as possible, I suppose, and you had a right to be angry. It was all the worse done because I was in earnest."
"So was I—for a moment," she said; "that was the trouble."
And that was the end of it, though even when he dropped her hand and turned away, he was aware of her slender figure standing in the door-way, and of a faint, inexplicable shadow in the eyes that followed him.
He went back to his quarters bitterly out of humor with himself.
"A nice fellow I am to talk to women!" he said. "I have not lived the life to fit me for it. Military command makes a man authoritative. What right had I to seem to assume control over her? She's not used to that kind of thing, even from those who might be supposed to have the right to do it. Some one ought to have the right—though that has gone out of fashion, too, I suppose." Something like a groan burst from him as he laid his forehead upon his hands, resting his elbows on the table before him. "If a man loved her well enough," he said, "he might do it and never hurt her; but if she loved him perhaps there would be no need of it."
He had passed through many such brief spasms of resentful misery of late, and he was beginning to acknowledge to himself that each one was stronger than the last. He had contended his ground with steady persistence and with stubborn condemnation of his own weakness, but he had lost it, inch by inch, until therewere times when he felt his foothold more insecure than he could have believed possible a year ago.
"Why should I think of myself as a man who has lost something?" he was wont to say to himself, bitterly and impatiently. "I had won nothing, and might never have won it. I had what would have been opportunity enough for a quicker temperament. It is nothing but sentiment."
And, even as he said it, there would come back to him some tone of Bertha's voice, some pretty natural turn of her head or figure as she sat or stood in the parlor with her small court around her; and, slight as the memory might be, the sudden leap of his pulses had more power than his argument.
It was these trifles and their habit of haunting him which were harder to combat than all the rest. His life had been so little affected by femininity that hers had a peculiarly persistent influence upon him. He noted in her things he might have seen in scores of other women, but half fancied belonged specially to herself. The sweep and fall of her dress, the perfume she used, the soft ruffles of lace she was given to wearing,—each of her little whims of adornment had its distinct effect, and seemed, in some mysterious way, to have been made her own, and to be shared with no other being. Other women wore flowers; but what flowers had ever haunted him as he had been haunted by the knot of heliotrope and violets he had seen her tuck carelessly into the belt of her dress one day? He had remembered them with a start again and again, and each time they had bloomed and breathed their soft scent afresh.
"It is all sentiment," he persisted. "There would be nothing new in it to—to that fellow Arbuthnot, for instance; but it is new to me, and I can't get rid of it, somehow."
He had heard in his past stories of men who cherished as treasures for a lifetime a ribbon or a flower, and had passed them by in undisturbed composure as incidentsbelonging only to the realms of wild romance; but he had never in the course of his existence felt anything so keen as the inconsequent thrill which was the result of his drawing suddenly from his pocket one night, on his return to his quarters after a romp with the children, a small, soft, long-wristed glove which it had been Master Jack's pleasure to hide there.
He had carried it sternly back the next morning and returned it to Bertha, but the act cost him an effort; it had been like a living presence in his room the night before, and he had slept less well because of it.
He had used his very susceptibility to these influences as an argument against his feeling.
"There is nothing substantial in it," he had said,—"nothing but what a man should find it easy to live down. It is the folly of a boy, intoxicated by the color of a girl's cheek and the curl of her hair. An old fellow, who any day may find a sprinkling of gray in his scalp-lock, should know better than to ponder over a pretty gown and—a bunch of flowers; and yet how one remembers them!"
And to-day it was the little things, as usual, almost as much as the great ones. The memory of the small, bright room, with its air of belonging to Bertha, and being furnished by Bertha, and strewed with appendages of Bertha; the slight figure, in its white morning dress, lying upon the sofa or standing between the folding-doors; the soft, full knot of her hair as he saw it when she turned her head proudly away from him,—what trifles they were! And yet if the room had been another, and the pretty dress not white, and the soft hair coiled differently, everything might have had another effect, and he might have been in another mood,—or so he fancied.
But he gave himself little leisure for the indulgence of his fancies, and he made his usual effort to crush them down and undervalue them. His groan was followed by a bitter laugh.
"It is the old story," he said. "I please myself by fancying that what would please me would make her happier. Arbuthnot would know better. Control would not suit her, even the gentlest. She has had her own way too long. She is a small, slight creature, but it has been her lot to rule all her life, in a small, slight creature's way. It is the natural sentimentality of an obstinate, big-boned fellow to fancy she would thrive under it. She would know better herself. She would laugh the thought to scorn, and be wise in doing it."
As he was saying it Bertha had gone back to her sofa, and sat there with the faint, troubled smile still on her face.
"He was angry," she said, "and so was I. It made him look very large; but I was not at all afraid of him,—no, positively, I was not afraid of him, and I am glad of that. It is bad enough to remember that I was emotional, and said things I did not mean to say. It is not like me to say things I don't mean to say. I must be more tired out than I knew. Ah, there is no denying that he was in the right! I will go away and stay some time. It will be better in every way."
For some minutes she sat motionless, her hands clasped lightly upon her knee, her eyes fixed on a patch of sunlight on the carpet. She did not move, indeed, until she heard the sound of her husband's foot upon the steps and his latch-key in the door. He entered the room immediately afterward, looking rather warm and a trifle exhilarated, and all the handsomer in consequence.
"Ah, Bertha, you are here!" he said. "I am glad you are not out! How warm it is! Fancy having such weather early in May! And three days ago we had fires. What a climate! There is something appropriate in it. It is purely Washingtonian, and as uncertain as—as senators. There's a scientific problem for the Signal Service Bureau to settle,—Does the unreliability of the climate affect the senatorial mind, or does the unreliability of the senatorial mind affect the climate?"
"It sounds like a conundrum," said Bertha, "and the Signal Service Bureau would give it up. You have beenwalking too fast, you foolish boy, and have overheated yourself. Come and lie down on the sofa and rest."
She picked up the cushion, which had fallen, and put it in place for him. There was always a pretty touch of maternal care for him in her manner. He accepted her invitation with delighted readiness, and, when he had thrown himself at luxurious full length upon the sofa, she took a seat upon its edge near him, having first brought from the mantel a large Japanese fan, with which she stirred the air gently.
"Why were you glad that I had not gone out?" she said. "Did you want me?"
"Oh!" he answered, "I always want you. You are the kind of little person one naturally wants,—and it is a sort of relief to find you on the spot. How nice this Grand Pasha business is,—lying on cushions and being fanned,—and how pretty and cool you look in your white frills! White is very becoming to you, Bertha."
Bertha glanced down at the frills.
"Is it?" she said. "Yes, I think it is, and this is a pretty gown. Richard!"
"Well?"
"You said it was a sort of relief to find me on the spot. Did you say it because I am not always here when you want me? Do you think I go out too much? Does it ever seem to you that I neglect you a little, and am not quite as domesticated as I should be? Should you be—happier—if I lived a quieter life and cared less for society?"
There was a touch of unusual earnestness in her voice, and her eyes were almost childishly eager as she turned them upon him.
"Happier!" he exclaimed, gayly. "My dear child! I could not easily be happier than I am. How could I accuse you of neglecting me? You satisfy me exactly in everything. Whose home is more charming, and whose children are better cared for than mine? It is not necessary for you to cook my dinner, but you arethe most delightful sauce to it in the world when you sit at the head of the table. What more could a man want?"
"I—I don't know," she said, slowly, "but I could not bear to think that I was not what I should be in my own home. It has always seemed to me that there could be no bad taste and bad breeding so inexcusable as the bad taste and bad breeding of a woman who is disagreeable and negligent in her own house. One has no need to put it on moral grounds even—the bad taste of it is enough. I don't think I could ever be disagreeable, or that you could think me so; but it struck me"—
"Don't let it strike you again," he interrupted, amiably. "It has struck me that there were never two people so well suited to each other as our married life has proved us to be. I don't mind admitting now that once or twice during the first year I thought that you were a little restless or unhappy, but it was when you were not well, and it was quite natural, and it all passed away, and I don't think it would occur to any one in these days to ask whether you are happy or not."
Bertha was playing with his watch-chain, and she separated one charm upon it from another carefully as she answered him in a soft, natural voice:
"There is a legend, you know," she said, "that the first year of one's marriage is always uncomfortable."
"Oh, mine was not uncomfortable," he returned,—"it was delightful, as all the other years have been; but—just occasionally, you know—there was a—well, a vague something—which never troubles me now."
"I must have behaved badly in some way," said Bertha, smiling, "or it would not have troubled you then."
And she stooped and kissed him on the forehead.
"I have a horrible conviction," she said after it, "that I was a vixen. Was I a vixen? Perhaps I was a vixen,and never suspected it, and no one suspected it but you. Poor boy! Why didn't you return me to papa with thanks? Well, as you have kept me so long, you must make the best of me. And it is very nice and polite in you to pretend that I am satisfactory, and don't make you wretched and your hearth a wilderness by being a hollow worldling."
"You are exactly what I want," he responded. "I am a hollow worldling myself. If I were a bricklayer, my idea of domestic bliss might be to spend my evenings at home and watch you mending stockings or knitting, or doing something of that sort; but even then I am afraid I should tire of it, and secretly long for something more frivolous."
"For something as frivolous as I am?" she said, with a nervous little laugh. "Quite as frivolous, Richard—really? But I know you will say so. You are always good to me and spoil me."
"No, I am not," he answered. "It is simply true that you always please me. It is true I am a rather easy-natured fellow, but I know plenty of good-natured fellows whose wives are terribly unsatisfactory. You are clever and pretty, and don't make mistakes, and you are never exacting, nor really out of humor, and it is impossible for me to tire of you"—
"Really?" she said, quickly, "is that last true?"
"Entirely true."
"Well," she commented, the color rising in her cheek, "that is a good deal for one's husband to say! That is a triumph. It amounts to a certificate of character."
"Well," he admitted, after a second's reflection, "upon the whole it is! I know more husbands than one; but no matter. I was going to add that long ago—before I met you, you know—my vague visions of matrimonial venture were always clouded by a secret conviction that when I had really passed the Rubicon, and had time for reflection, things might begin to assume a rather serious aspect."
"And I," said Bertha, a little thoughtfully, "have never assumed a serious aspect."
"Never," he replied, exultingly. "You have been a perfect success. There is but one Bertha"—
"And her husband is her prophet!" she added. "You are very good to me, Richard, and it is entirety useless for you to deny it, because I shall insist upon it with—with wild horses, if necessary; which figure of speech I hope strikes you as being strong enough."
She was herself again—neither eager nor in earnest, ready to amuse him and to be amused, waving her fan for his benefit, touching up his cushions to make him more comfortable, and seeming to enjoy her seat on the edge of his sofa very much indeed.
"Do you know," she said, at length, "what I have thought of doing? I have thought quite seriously of going in a day or so to Fortress Monroe with the children."
She felt that he started slightly, and wondered why.
"Are you surprised?" she asked. "Would you rather I would not go?"
"No," he answered, "if you think it would be better for you. You are tired, and the weather is very warm. But—have you set any particular day?"
"No," she said, "I should not do that without speaking to you first."
"Well," he returned, "then suppose you do not go this week. I have half-invited Senator Planefield, and Macpherson and Ashley to dinner for Thursday."
"Is it because you want them to talk about the bill?" she said. "How interested you are in it, Richard! Why is it? Railroads never struck me as being particularly fascinating material. It seems to me that amateur enthusiasm would be more readily awakened by something more romantic and a little intangible,—a tremendous claim, for instance, which would make some poor, struggling creatures fabulously rich. I am always interested in claims; the wilder they are, the betterand it invariably delights me when the people get them 'through' to the utter consternation of the Government. It has faintly dawned upon me, on two or three such occasions, that I have no political morality, and I am afraid it is a feminine failing. It is not a masculine one, of course; so it must be feminine. I wish you had chosen a claim, Richard, instead of a railroad. I am sure it would have been far more absorbing."
"The railroad is quite absorbing enough," he answered, "and there is money enough involved in it. Just think of those Westoria lands, and what they will be worth if the road is carried through them,—and as to romance, what could be more romantic than the story attached to them?"
"But I don't know the story," said Bertha. "What is it?"
"It is a very effective story," he replied, "and it was the story which first called my attention to the subject. There was a poor, visionary fellow whose name was Westor, to whom a large tract of this land came suddenly as an inheritance from a distant relative. He was not practical enough to make much use of it, and he lived in the house upon it in a desolate, shiftless way for several years, when he had the ill-fortune to discover coal on the place. I say it was ill-fortune, because the discovery drove him wild. He worked, and starved, and planned, and scraped together all the money he could to buy more land, keeping his secret closely for some time. When he could do no more he came to Washington, and began to work for a railroad which would make his wealth available. His energy was a kind of frenzy, they say. He neither ate, slept, nor rested, and really managed to get the matter into active movement. He managed to awaken a kind of enthusiasm, and, for a short time, was a good deal talked of and noticed. He was a big, raw-boned young Westerner, and created a sensation by his very uncouthness in its connection with the wildly fabulous stories told abouthis wealth. He had among his acquaintances a man of immense influence, and at this man's house he met the inevitable young woman. She amused herself, and he fell madly in love, and became more frenzied than ever. It was said that she intended to marry him if he was successful, and that she made his poor, helpless life such an anguish to him that he lost his balance entirely. There came a time when he was entirely penniless, and his prospects were so unpromising, and his despair so great, that he went to his boarding-house one day with the intention of killing himself, and just as he finished loading his pistol a letter was handed in to him, and when he opened it he found it contained the information that another distant relative, affected by the rumors concerning him, had left him twenty thousand dollars. He laid his pistol in a drawer, and left the house to begin again. He had an interview with his lady-love, and one with his man of influence, and at the end of a few weeks had bought more land, and parted in some mysterious way with the rest of his money, and was on the very eve of success. Poor fellow!"
"Poor fellow!" said Bertha. "Oh! don't say that any thing went wrong!"
"It would not be half so dramatic a story if everything had gone right," said Richard, with fine artistic appreciation. "You could never guess what happened. Everything he did seemed to work to a miracle; every train was laid and every match applied. On the day that was to decide his fate he did not go near the Capitol, but wandered out and took his place on one of the seats in the park which faced the house at which the young woman was visiting, and sat there, a lank, unshorn, haggard figure, either staring at her window or leaning forward with his head upon his hands. People actually heard of his being there and went to look at him, and came away without having dared to address him. The young woman looked out from behind her blind and was furious, and even sent word to him to goaway. But he would not go, and only glared at this man who was sent to him with the message. He sat there until night, and then staggered across and rang at the bell, and inquired for the man of influence, and was told—what do you suppose he was told?"
"Oh!" cried Bertha, desperately. "I don't know."
"He was told that he was occupied."
"Occupied!" echoed Bertha.
Richard clasped his hands comfortably and gracefully behind his head.
"That's the climax of the story," he said. "He was occupied—in being married to the young woman, of whom he had been greatly enamored for some time, and who had discreetly decided to marry him because he had proved to her that the other man's bill could not possibly pass. It could not pass because he had the energy and influence to prevent its doing so, and he prevented its passing because he knew he would lose the young woman otherwise. At least that is the story, and I like the version."
"I don't like it!" said Bertha. "It makes me feel desperate."
"What it made the poor fellow feel," Richard went on, "nobody ever found out, as he said nothing at all about it. On hearing the truth he sat down on the steps for a few minutes, and then got up and went away. He went to his boarding-house and had an interview with his landlady, who was a kind-hearted creature, and when she saw him began to cry because his bill had not passed. But when she spoke of it she found he knew nothing of it; he had never asked about it, and he said to her, 'Oh! that doesn't matter,—it isn't of any consequence particularly; I'm only troubled aboutyourbill. I haven't money enough to pay it. I've only enough to take me home, and you'll have to let me give you the things I have in my room for pay. I only want one thing out of there,—if you'll let me go and get it I won't take anything else.' So she let him go, and stoodoutside his door and cried, while he went in and took something out of a drawer."
"Richard!" cried Bertha.
"Yes," said Richard. "He actually found a use for it, after all—but not in Washington. He went as far as he could by rail, and then he tramped the rest of the way to Westoria; they say it must have taken him several days, and that his shoes were worn to shreds, and his feet cut and bruised by the walk. When he reached the house, it had been shut up so long that the honeysuckle which climbed about it had grown across the door, and he could not have got in without breaking or pushing it aside. People fancied that at first he thought of going in, but that when he saw the vine it stopped him,—slight barrier as it was. They thought he had intended to go in because he had evidently gone to the door, and before he turned away had broken off a spray of the flowers which was just beginning to bloom; he held it crushed in his hand when they found him, two or three days later. He had carried it back to the edge of the porch, and had sat down—and finished everything—with the only thing he had brought back from Washington—the pistol. How does that strike you as the romance of a railroad?"
Bertha clenched her hand, and struck her knee a fierce little blow.
"Richard," she said, "if that had happened in my day I should have turned lobbyist, and every thought, and power, and gift I had would have been brought to bear to secure the passage of that bill."
Richard laughed,—a pleased but slightly nervous laugh.
"Suppose you bring them to bear now," he suggested.
"There would not be any reason for my doing it now," she answered; "but I shall certainly be interested."
Richard laughed again.
"By Jove!" he said, "the poor devils who own it would think there was reason enough!"
"Who owns it?"
"Several people, who speculated in it because the railroad was talked of again, and on a more substantial footing. It fell to Westor's only living relation, who was an ignorant old woman, and sold it without having any idea of its real value. Her impression was that, if she kept it, it would bring her ill-luck. There is no denying that it looks just now like a magnificent speculation."
"And that poor fellow," said Bertha,—"thatpoorfellow"—
"That poor fellow?" Richard interposed. "Yes—but his little drama is over, you know, and perhaps there are others going on quite as interesting, if we only knew them. It is very like you, Bertha—and it is very adorable," touching her shoulder caressingly with his hand, "to lose sight entirely of the speculation, and care only for the poor fellow. You insist upon having your little drama under all circumstances."
"Yes," she admitted. "I confess that I like my little drama, and I have not a doubt that—as I said before—I could not have lived in the midst of that without turning lobbyist—which is certainly not my vocation."
"Not your vocation?" said Richard. "You would make the most successful little lobbyist in the world!"
Bertha turned upon him an incredulous and rather bewildered smile.
"I!" she exclaimed. "I?"
"Yes, you!"
"Well," she replied, after a second's pause given to inspection of him, "thisis open derision!"
"It is perfectly true," was his response; "and it is true for good reasons. Your strength would lie in the very fact that you would be entirely unlike your co-laborers in the field. You have a finished little air of ingenuousness which would be your fortune."
She shook her head with a pretty gesture.
"No," she said. "I am very clever, and of course you cannot help observing it, but I am not clever enough for that."
He gave her a glance at once curious and admiring.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "it is my belief you are clever enough for anything."
"Richard," she said, "shall I tell you a secret?"
"Yes."
"And you will bury it in the innermost recesses of your soul, andneverdivulge it?"
"Certainly."
"And brace yourself for a shock when I reveal it to you?"
"Yes."
"Well, here it is! My cleverness is like what you—and two or three other most charming people—are good enough to call my prettiness. It is a delusion and a snare!"
"Come!" he said. "You are attempting to deceive me."
"No," she answered. "I am attempting to undeceive you. I am not really pretty or clever at all, and it has been the object of my life to prevent its being detected."
She opened her eyes in the most charmingly ingenuous manner and nodded her head.
"I discovered it myself," she said, "long ago,—comparatively early in life,—and resolved to conceal it. And nothing but the confidence I repose in you would have induced me to mention it."
"Well," he replied, "you have concealed it pretty well under the circumstances."
"Ah!" she said, "but you don't know what a burden it is to carry about, and what subterfuges I have to resort to when I seem on the very verge of being found out. There is Larry, for instance,—I am almost sure that Larry suspects me, especially when I am tired, or chance to wear an unbecoming gown. You know how particularI am about my gowns? Well, that is my secret. I haven't an attraction, really, but my gowns and my spirits and my speciousness. The solitary thing I do feel I have reason to pride myself on is that I am bold enough to adapt my gowns in such a way as to persuade you that I am physically responsible for the color and shape of them. You fancy you are pleased with me when you are simply pleased with some color of which I exist on the reflection or glow. In nine cases out of ten it is merely a matter of pale blue or pink, and silk or crèpe or cashmere; and in the tenth it is nothing but spirits and speciousness."
"Oh," he said, "there is no denying that you would make a wonderful lobbyist."
"Well," she answered, rising and going to the table to lay her fan down, "when you invest largely in Westoria lands and require my services in that capacity, I will try to distinguish myself. I think I should like to begin with the Westoria lands if I begin at all. But in the meantime I must go upstairs and talk to the seamstress about Janey's new white dresses. You are cool enough now to enjoy your lunch when the bell rings and you shall have some iced tea if you would like it."
"I would like it very well, and, by the by, did Tredennis bring the 'Clarion,' as he said he would?"
"Yes, it is here," and she handed it to him from the table. "You can read it while I am upstairs."
"Have you read it?" he said, opening it and turning to the editorial.
"Not yet. I shall read it this afternoon."
"Yes, do. The facts are put very forcibly. And—you will decide not to go to Fortress Monroe just yet?"
She hesitated a moment, but he did not observe it.
"I must be here when your friends dine with you, of course," she said. "And a week or even a little more does not make so much difference, after all. It may be quite cool again to-morrow."
And she went out of the room and left him to his paper.
It was two weeks after this that Arbuthnot, sauntering down the avenue in a leisurely manner, on his way from his office, and having a fancy to stroll through Lafayette Park, which was looking its best in its spring bravery and bloom, on entering the iron gate-way found his attention attracted by the large figure of Colonel Tredennis, who was approaching him from the opposite direction, walking slowly and appearing deeply abstracted. It cannot be said that Mr. Arbuthnot felt any special delight in the prospective encounter. He had not felt that he had advanced greatly in Colonel Tredennis' good opinion, and had, it must be confessed, resigned himself to that unfortunate condition of affairs without making any particular effort to remedy it,—his private impression being that the result would scarcely be likely to pay for the exertion, taking into consideration the fact that he was constitutionally averse to exertion.
"Why," he had said to Bertha, "should I waste my vital energies in endeavoring to persuade a man that I am what he wants, when perhaps I am not? There are scores of people who will naturally please him better than I do, and there are people enough who please me better than he does. Let him take his choice,—and it is easy enough to see that I am not his choice."
"What is he thinking of now, I wonder?" he said, a vague plan for turning into another walk flitting through his mind. "Are his friends, the Piutes, on the war-path and actively engaged in dissecting agents, or is he simply out of humor? He is not thinking of where he is going. He will walk over that nursemaid and obliterate the twins—yes, I thought so."
The colonel had verified his prophecy, and, aroused from his reverie by the devastation he had caused, he came to a stand-still with a perplexed and distressed countenance.
"I beg your pardon," Arbuthnot heard him say, in his great, deep voice. "I hope I did not hurt you. I had forgotten where I was." And he stooped and set the nearest twin on its feet on the grass and then did the same thing for the other, upon which both stood and stared at him, and, not being hurt at all, having merely rolled over on the sod, were in sufficiently good spirits to regard with interest the fact that he was fumbling in his coat-pocket for something.
The article in question was a package of bonbons, which he produced and gave to the nearest toddler.
"Here!" he said. "I bought these for another little girl, but I can get some more. They are all right," he added, turning to the mulatto girl, whose admiration of his martial bearing revealed itself in a most lenient grin,—"they won't hurt them. They can eat them all without being harmed."
And then he turned away, and in doing so caught sight of Arbuthnot, and, somewhat to the surprise of the latter, advanced toward him at once with the evident intention of joining him.
"It is rather a curious thing that I should meet you here," he said. "I was thinking of you when I met with the catastrophe you saw just now. Do you often go home this way?"
"Not very often," Arbuthnot replied. "Sometimes, when things look as they do now," with a gesture indicating the brilliant verdure.
"Everything looks very fresh and luxuriant," said Tredennis. "The season is unusually far advanced, I suppose. It is sometimes a great deal too warm to be pleasant."
"It will be decidedly warmer every day," said Arbuthnot. "We shall have a trying summer. ThePresident is going out to the Soldiers' Home next week—which is earlier than usual. There are only two or three of the senators' families left in the city. The exodus began weeks ago."
"Such weather as we have had the last few days," said the colonel, with his slight frown, "must be very exhausting to those who are not strong, and who have gone through a gay winter."
"The best thing such people can do," responded Arbuthnot, dryly, "is to make their way to the mountains or the sea as soon as possible. Most of them do."
Tredennis' reply was characteristically abrupt.
"Mrs. Amory does not," he said.
"No," answered Arbuthnot, and he looked at the end of his cigar as if he saw nothing else.
"Why doesn't she?" demanded Tredennis.
"She ought to," said Arbuthnot, with calm adroitness.
"Ought to!" Tredennis repeated. "She should have gone months ago. She—she is actually ill. Why in heaven's name does she stay? She told me two weeks since that she was going to Fortress Monroe, or some such place."
"She had better go to a New England farm-house, and wear a muslin gown and swing in a hammock," said Arbuthnot.
"You see that as well, do you?" said the colonel. "Why don't you tell her so?" and having said it, seemed to pull himself up suddenly, as if he felt he had been unconsciously impetuous.
Arbuthnot laughed.
His smile had died completely away, however, when he gave his side glance at his companion's face a moment later.
"She was quite serious in her intention of going away two weeks ago," he said. "She told me so; nothing but Richard's dinner-party prevented her departure in the first place."
He spoke in an entirely non-committal tone, butthere was a touch of interest in his quiet glance at Tredennis.
"You dined there with Planefield and the rest, didn't you?" he added.
"Yes."
"I didn't. Richard was kind enough to invite me, but I should only have been in the way." He paused an instant, and then added, without any change of tone or manner, "I know nothing of the Westoria lands."
"Was it necessary that you should?" said Tredennis. "I did not."
"Oh," Arbuthnot answered, "I knew they would discuss them, and the bill, as it pleases Amory to be interested in them just now."
"I remember that the matter was referred to several times," said Tredennis; "even Mrs. Amory seemed to know a good deal of it."
"A good deal!" said Arbuthnot. "In favor of the bill?"
"Yes," Tredennis answered. "She had been reading up, it appeared. She said some very good things about it—in a laughing way. Why does she waste her time and strength on such folly?" he added, hotly. "Why—why is she allowed to do it?"
"The New England farm would be better for her just now," said Arbuthnot—again adroitly.
"Why should Amory waste his time upon it?" the colonel went on; "though that is his affair, of course, and not mine!"
They had reached the gate by this time, but they did not pass through it. Finding themselves near it, they turned—as if by mutual consent, and yet without speaking of doing so—into the walk nearest them.
It was after taking a few steps in silence down this path, that Colonel Tredennis spoke again, abruptly:
"When I was thinking of you just before we met," he said, "I was thinking of you in connection with—with the Amorys."
He knew the statement had a blunt enough sound, and his recognition of it irritated him, but he was beginning to be accustomed to his own bluntness of statement, and, at any rate, this led him to the point he meant to reach.
Arbuthnot's reply was characteristic. It was not blunt at all, and had an air of simple directness, which was the result not only of a most creditable tact and far-sightedness, but of more private good feeling and sincerity than he was usually credited with.
"I am always glad to be thought of in connection with the Amorys," he said. "And I am glad that it is perfectly natural that I should be connected with them in the minds of their friends. There has been a very close connection between us for several years, and I hope they have found as much pleasure in it as I have."
Tredennis recognized the tact even if he was not aware of the good feeling and far-sightedness. The obstacles had been removed from his path, and the conversation had received an air of unconstrained naturalness, which would make it easier for him to go on.
"Then," he said, "there will be no need to explain what I mean by saying that I was thinking specially of your interest in Mrs. Amory herself—and your influence over her."
"I wish my influence over her was as strong as my interest in her," was his companion's reply. "My interest in her is a sincere enough feeling, and a deep one. There is every reason why it should be."
"I,"—began the colonel,—"I"—And then he stopped.
"Your interest in her," Arbuthnot went on, seeming to enjoy his cigar very much, "is even a more natural feeling than mine—though I scarcely think it can be stronger. It is not a matter of relationship so much,—as a rule, relationship does not amount to a great deal,—but the fact that you knew her as a girl, and feel toward the professor as you do, must give her a distinct place in your mind."
"It is a feeling," said Tredennis, "which disturbs me when I see that she is in actual danger through her own want of care for herself. Are women always so reckless? Is it a Washington fashion? Why should she forget that her children need her care, if she does not choose to think of herself? Is that a Washington fashion, too?"
"You were thinking," said Arbuthnot, "and flattering me in doing it, that what I might say to her on the necessity of leaving the city might have some little effect?"
"Yes," Tredennis answered. "And if not upon herself, upon Amory. He is always ready to listen to you."
Arbuthnot was silent for some moments. He was following a certain train of thought closely and rapidly, but his expression did not betray him at all.
"She would have gone two weeks ago," he said quietly next, "if it had not been for Richard's engagements with Planefield and the rest. He has had them at his house two or three times since then, and they have made little parties to Mount Vernon and Arlington and Great Falls. Planefield is a lady's man, and he finds Mrs. Amory very charming."
"What!" exclaimed Tredennis, with intolerant haughtiness,—"that coarse fellow?"
"He isn't a nice fellow," said Arbuthnot, "but he won't show his worst side to her—any more than he can help. He is a very powerful fellow, they say."
Here he stopped. They had reached their gate-way again.
"I'll do what I can," he said. "It won't be much, perhaps; but I will do what I can. I fully appreciate the confidence you showed in speaking to me."
"I fully appreciate the manner in which you listened to what I had to say," said Tredennis.
And, somewhat to Arbuthnot's surprise, he held out his hand to him.
Instead of making his way home at once Arbuthnot turned up the side of the street on which the Amorys' house stood. As he reached the house the door was opened, and a man came out and walked down the steps. He was a man with a large frame, a darkly florid complexion, and heavily handsome features. As he passed Arbuthnot he gave him a glance and a rather grudging bow, which expressed candidly exactly the amount of pleasure he derived from encountering him.
Bertha was in the parlor alone. When Arbuthnot entered he found her standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the roses on her gayly painted fan, and evidently not seeing them.
"Well," he began, by way of greeting, "I hope you have been enjoying yourself—with your senators."
She looked up, and made a quick, eager little movement toward him, as if she was more glad to see him than usual.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "I believe I was wishing you would come."
"Thank you," he said; "but the compliment would be greater if you were sure of it."
"I think I am sure of it, now you are here," she answered, "though I don't know at all why I wanted you—unless it was to tell you that I have not been enjoying myself in the least—with my senators."
"I am delighted to hear it," he replied. "Nothing could please me better. They are always too numerous, and lately one is continually meeting them on the steps and being scowled at."
She shut her fan quickly, with a slight frown.
"Why scowled at?" she said. "That would be absurd enough."
"Absurd or not," he laughed, "it is true."
But, notwithstanding his laugh, there was no change in her face he did not see.
They had seated themselves by this time, and Bertha was looking at her fan again, and opening and shutting it slowly.
"They are not my senators," she said. "They are Richard's, and—I am getting a little tired of them, though I should not like to tell him so. When it is warm, as it is to-day, I am very tired of them."
"I should not think it at all improbable," remarked Arbuthnot, dryly. "It has struck me that it would be necessary for the mercury to be several degrees below zero before you would find the one who went out just now, for instance, especially exhilarating."
"He is not exhilarating at all," she said. "Richard likes him," she added, a moment afterward. "I don't know exactly why, but he really seems to admire him. They are quite intimate. I think the acquaintance began through some law business he gave him in connection with the Westoria lands. I have tried to like him on Richard's account. You must remember," she said, with a smile, "I first tried to like you on Richard's account."
"I hope you succeeded better than you will with Planefield," he said.
"I might succeed with him if I persevered long enough," she answered. "The difficulty lies in the perseverance. Richard says I would make a good lobbyist, but I am sure I should not. I could not be persistently amiable and entertaining to people who tired me."
"Don't deplore your deficiencies until it becomes necessary for you to enter the profession," said Arbuthnot. "I don't like to hear you speak of it," he added, with a touch of sharpness.
"I don't deplore them," said Bertha. "And it is only one of my little jokes. But, if the fortunes of the Westoria lands depended on me, I am afraid they would be a dismal failure."
"As they don't depend on you," he remarked, "doesn't it occur to you that you might as well leave them to Senator Planefield? I must confess it has presented itself to me in that light."
"It is rather odd," she said, in a tone of reflection, "that though I have nothing whatever to do with them, they actually seem to have detained me in town for the last two weeks."
"It is quite time you went away," said Arbuthnot.
"I know that," she answered. "And I feel it more every day."
She raised her eyes suddenly to his.
"Laurence," she said, "I am not well. Don't tell Richard, but I think I am not well at all. I—I am restless and nervous—and—and morbid. I am actually morbid. Things trouble me which never troubled me before. Sometimes I lose all respect for myself. You know I always was rather proud of my self-control. I am not quite as proud of it as I used to be. About two weeks ago I—I positively lost my temper."
He did not laugh, as she had been half-afraid he would. His manner was rather quiet; on the contrary—it was as if what she said struck him as being worth listening to with some degree of serious attention, though his reply was not exactly serious.
"I hope you had sufficient reason," he said.
"No," she answered. "I had no reason at all, which makes it all the more humiliating. I think I have been rather irritable for a month or two. I have allowed myself to—to be disturbed by things which were really of no consequence, and I have taken offence at things and—and—resented trifles, and it was the merest trifle which made me lose my temper—yes, actually lose my temper, and say what I did not intend to say, in themost open and abject manner. What could be more abject than to say things you did not intend to say? You know I never was given to that kind of thing."
"No," he responded, "it cannot be said that you were."
"It was so—so revolting to me after it was over," she went on, "that it seemed to make me more weak-minded than ever. When you once give way to your emotions it is all going down-hill—you do it again and again. I never did it before, but I have been on the verge of doing it two or three times since."
"Don't go any farther than the verge," he said.
"I don't intend to," she answered. "I don't like even the verge. I resent it with all my strength. I should like to invent some kind of horrible torture to pay myself for—for what I did."
He was watching her very closely, but she was not aware of it. She had arrested his attention completely enough by this time, and the fact made itself evident in his intent and rather startled expression.
"I hope it was nothing very serious," he said.
"It was serious enough for me," she replied. "Nobody else was hurt, but it was serious enough for me—the mere knowing that for a few minutes I had lost my hold on myself. I didn't like it—I didn't like it!"
There was an intensity in her manner, in her voice, in her face, in her very figure itself, which was curiously disproportionate to her words. She leaned forward a little, and laid her small, clenched hand upon her knee.
"In all my life," she said, slowly,—"in all my life, I have never had a feeling which was as strong as myself. I have been that fortunate. I have been angry, but never so angry that I could not seem perfectly still and calm; I have been happy, but never so happy that I could not have hidden it if I chose; I have been unhappy—for a moment or so—but never so unhappy that I had the horrible anguish of being found out. I am not capable of strong, real emotions, I am tooshallow and—and light. I have been light all my life, and Iwillbe light until the end.
"Only the children could make me suffer, really," she said after it,—"only the children, and all women are like that. Through Janey, or Jack, or Meg, my heart could be torn in two, if they were in pain, or badly treated, or taken from me,—that is nothing but common nature; but nothing else could hurt me so that I should cry out—nothing and nobody—not even Richard!"
She stopped herself, and opened her fan again.
"There!" she exclaimed. "Why did I say so much then, and say it so vehemently, as if it was of consequence? Nothing is of consequence—nothing, nothing!" And she laughed, and rose and began to take up and set down again some trifles on the mantel.
Arbuthnot still watched her.
"No," he said, "you are quite right; nothing is of consequence really, and the sooner one learns that, the better for one's peace of mind. The worst pain you could have to bear could not last you more than a few score years, and you would get used to it in that time; the greatest happiness you could yearn for would not last any longer, and you would get tired of it in time, too."
"Tired of it!" she echoed. "One could tire of anything in threescore years and ten. How tired one must be of one's self before it is over—how tired! how tired!" and she threw up her hands in a sudden, desperate gesture.
"No," he answered, in a tone whose level coolness was a forcible contrast to her own. "Not necessarily, if one doesn't expect too much. If we take things for what they are worth, and don't let ourselves be deceived by them, there is plenty of rational entertainment to be had by the way. We mayn't like it quite as well as what we set out with expecting, but we can manage to subsist upon it. I hope I am logical. I know I am not eloquent." He said it bitterly.
"No," she returned, without looking at him, "youare not eloquent, perhaps, but you are speaking the truth—and I like to hear it. I want to hear it. It is good for me. It is always good for people to hear the truth; the bare, unvarnished, unadorned truth. Go on."
"If I go on," he said, still bitterly, "I shall begin to drag myself in, and I don't care to do it. It is natural that I should feel the temptation. I never knew the man yet who could talk in this strain and not drag himself in."
"Drag yourself in as much as you like," she said, even fiercely, "and be an example to me."
"I should be example enough if I said all I could," he replied. "AmIa happy man?"
She turned, and for a moment they looked into each other's eyes; his were stern, hard, and miserable.
"No," she cried out, "you are not. No one is happy in the world!" And she dropped her face upon her hands as she leaned upon the mantel.
"I might have been happier if I had begun right, I suppose," he said.
"Begun!" she repeated. "Does any one ever begin right? One ought to begin at the end and go backward, and then one might make something of it all."
"I didn't make much of it," he said. "I was not as wise as you. I began with emotions, and follies, and fires,—and the rest of it, and the enjoyment I derived from them was scarcely what I anticipated it would be. The emotions didn't last, and the follies didn't pay, and the fires burnt out—and that was the worst of all. And they always do—and that is worse still. It is in the nature of things. Look at that grate," pointing to it. "It looked different a week ago, when we had a rainy night and sat around it. We could have burned ourselves at it then if we had been feeble-minded enough to try it; we couldn't do it now; and yet a few days ago it was hot enough. The fire has burned out, and even the ashes are gone."
She stooped down, picked up her fan, and reseated herself upon the sofa. She did not look quite like herself,—her face was very pale but for the two red spots Tredennis had seen on her cheeks when her display of feeling had startled him; but all at once a change had taken place in her manner. There was a sort of deadly stillness in it.
"We are a long way from my temper," she said,—"a long way."
"Yes," he replied, "about as far as we could get in the space of time allowed us; and we have been a trifle emotional."
"And it was my fault," she continued. "Isn't it time I went somewhere cool and bracing? I think you must admit it is."
"Yes," he said, "it is time. Take my advice, and go."
"I'll go," she said, steadily, "the day after to-morrow. And I'll not go to Fortress Monroe. I'll go into the mountains of Virginia,—to a farm-house I know of, where one has forests, and silence, and nature—and nothing else. I'll take the children, and live out-of-doors with them, and read to them, and talk to them, and sew for them when I want anything to do. I always was happy and natural when I was sewing and doing things for them. I like it. Living in that simple, natural way, and having the children with me, will rest and cure me if anything will on earth; the children always—the children"—
She stopped and sat perfectly still; her voice had broken, and she had turned her face a little away.
Arbuthnot got up. He stood a moment, as he always did before going, but he did not look directly at her, though he did not seem to avoid her in his glance.
"It is the best thing you can do," he said,—"the very best thing. You will be thoroughly rested when you come home, and that is what you need. I will gonow; I hear Richard, and I want to speak to him alone."
And by the time the door opened and Richard stood on the threshold, he had reached him and turned him around, throwing his arm boyishly over his shoulder.
"You are just in time," he said. "Take me into the museum, or the library. I want to have a confidential chat with you."
And they went out together.