The following day Richard presented himself to Tredennis in the morning, looking a little disturbed, and scarcely in such excellent spirits as usual.
"Bertha and the children are going away to-morrow," he said. "And if you have no other engagement you are to come and dine with us this evening and say good-by."
"I have no other engagement," Tredennis answered. "I shall be glad to come. They are really going to Fortress Monroe to-morrow?"
Richard threw himself into a chair with a rather discontented air. "They are not going to Fortress Monroe at all," he said. "They are going to bury themselves in the mountains of Virginia. It is a queer fancy of Bertha's. I think she is making a mistake. She won't like it, really, when she tries it."
"If she needs rest," said Tredennis, "certainly the mountains of Virginia"—
"The mountains of Virginia," interrupted Richard, "were not made for Bertha. She will tire of them in a week. I wish she would not go!" he said, with the faintest possible touch of petulance.
"You will miss her very much, of course," said Tredennis.
"Oh, yes, I shall miss her. I always miss her—and I shall miss her specially just now."
"Just now?" said Tredennis.
"Oh," said Richard, straightening himself somewhat and clearing his slightly knitted brow, "I was only thinking of two or three plans which had half-formed themselves in my mind. I was looking at it from aselfish point of view, which I had no right to do. I suppose things might wait—until she comes back."
"Are you going with her?" said Tredennis.
"I!" exclaimed Richard. "No, I could not do that. My business would not allow of it. I have more than usual on hand just now. I shall run down to see them once a week, if possible. I must confess," with a laugh, "that I could not make up my mind to three months of it. Bertha knows that."
Taking all things into consideration, he bore the prospect of his approaching loneliness very well. He soon began to speak of other matters, and before he took his departure had quite recovered his usual gayety. As he talked Tredennis regarded him with some curiosity.
"He has a fortunate temperament," he was thinking. "He would have been happy if she had remained, but he is not unhappy because she goes. There are men who would take it less lightly—though, after all, he is the one to be envied."
Tredennis did not feel that he himself was greatly to be envied. He had said that she ought to go, and had been anxious and unhappy because she had not gone; but now that she was going he was scarcely happier. There were things he should miss every day. As he remembered them, he knew he had not allowed himself to admit what their value had been to him. The very fact that they had not been better friends made it harder. From the first he had been aware that a barrier stood between them, and in the interview which had revealed to him something of its nature he had received some sharp wounds.
"There was truth in what she said," he had often pondered since, "though she put it in a woman's way. I have resented what she has said and done, often enough, and have contrasted it bitterly with what I remembered—God knows why! I had no right to do it, and it was all folly; but I did it, and made myselfwretched through it—and she saw the folly, and not the wretchedness."
But now that her presence would no longer color and animate the familiar rooms he realized what their emptiness would be. He could not endure the thought of what it would be to go into them for the first time and sit alone with Richard,—no bright figure moving before them, or sitting in its chair by the table, or the window, or the hearth. The absence of the very things which had angered and disturbed him would leave a blank. It would actually be a wretchedness to see no longer that she often chose to be flippant, and mocked for mere mocking's sake.
"What!" he said, savagely, "am I beginning to care for her very faults? Then it is best that she should go."
But his savageness was not against Bertha, but against himself and his weakness.
When he arrived at the house in the evening he found Bertha in the parlor, with Jack and Janey, who were to be allowed to share the farewell dinner.
As she advanced to meet him with a child on either side, he was struck by certain changes which he observed in her dress and manner. She wore a dark, simple gown, her hair was dressed a trifle more closely and plainly than usual, and there was no color about her. When she gave him her hand, and stood with the other resting on Jack's shoulder, her eyes uplifted to his own, he was bewildered by a feeling that he was suddenly brought face to face with a creature quite strange to him. He could not have said that she was actually cold and reserved, but there was that in the quiet of her manner which suggested both reserve and coldness.
"I have allowed the children to stay downstairs," she said, "and they are to dine with us if they will be good. They wished very much to see as much of you as possible—as it will be some time before they return—and I think they will be quiet."
"If you will seat one on each side of me," said Tredennis, "I will keep them quiet."
"You are very kind," she answered, "but I should scarcely like to do that."
And then she returned to her seat by the window, and he sat opposite her on the end of a sofa, with Janey leaning against his knee.
"You are not going to Fortress Monroe?" he said.
"No," she replied; "I am going to the Virginia mountains."
"I should think that would be better," he said, putting an arm around Janey.
"I thought so," she answered, "upon reflection. I am not as strong as I should be, and I think I dislike ill-health even more than most people do."
She held Jack's hand, and spoke in a quiet tone of common things,—of her plans for the summer, of the children, of Richard; and Tredennis listened like a man in a dream, missing the color and vivacity from her manner as he had known he should miss her presence from the rooms when she was gone.
"Tell Uncle Philip something of what we are going to do," she said to Jack. "Tell him about the hammocks, and the spades we are to dig with, and the books. We are to live out of doors and enjoy ourselves immensely," she added, with a faint smile.
"Mamma is going to play with us every day," said Jack, triumphantly. "And we are going to lie in our hammocks while she reads to us and tells us stories."
"And there will be no parties and no company," added Janey. "Only we are to be the company."
"And Jack is to take care of me," said Bertha, "because I am growing old, and he is so big."
Jack regarded her dubiously.
"You haven't any wrinkles," he said.
"Yes, I have, Jack," she answered; "but they don't show." And a little laugh broke from her, and she lether cheek rest against his dark love-locks for a moment in a light caress.
Glancing up at the colonel's face at this juncture, Janey found cause in it for serious dissatisfaction. She raised her hand, and drew a small forefinger across his forehead.
"Uncle Philip," she said, "you are bad again. The black marks have come back, and you are quite ugly; and you promised you would try not to let them come any more."
"I beg your pardon, Janey," he answered, and then turned to Bertha. "She does not like my black face," he said, "and no wonder. I am rather an unfortunate fellow to have my faults branded upon me so plainly that even a child can see them."
There was a touch of bitterness in the words, and in his manner of uttering them. Bertha answered him in a soft, level voice.
"You are severe upon yourself," she said. "It is much safer to be severe upon other people."
It was rather cruel, but she did not object to being cruel. There come to most women moments when to be cruel is their only refuge against themselves and others; and such a moment had come to her.
In looking back upon the evening, when it was over, the feeling that it had been unreal was stronger in Tredennis's mind than any other. It was all unreal from beginning to end,—the half-hour before dinner, when Arbuthnot and Richard and the professor came in, and Bertha stood near her father's chair and talked to him, and Tredennis, holding Janey on his knee and trying to answer her remarks lucidly, was aware only of the presence of the dark, slender figure near him, and the strange quiet of the low voice; the dinner itself, during which Richard was in the most attractive mood, and the professor was rather silent, and Arbuthnot's vivacity was a little fitful at first and afterward seemed to recover itself and rise to the occasion;while Bertha, with Jack on one hand and Janey on the other, cared for their wants and answered Richard's sallies, and aided him in them, and yet was not herself at all, but a new being.
"And you think," said the professor, later in the evening, when they had returned to the parlors,—"you think that you will like the quiet of the mountains?"
"I think it will be good for me," she answered, "and the children will like it."
"She will not like it at all," said Richard. "She will abhor it in ten days, and she will rush off to Fortress Monroe, and dance every night to make up for her temporary mental aberration."
"No, she will not," said Arbuthnot. "She has made preparations to enjoy her seclusion in its dramatic aspects. She is going to retire from the world in the character of a graceful anchorite, and she has already begun to dress the part. She is going to be simple and serious, and a trifle severe; and it even now expresses itself in the lines and color of her gown."
She turned toward him, with the sudden gleam of some new expression in her eyes.
"How well you understand me!" she said. "No one else would have understood me so well. I never can deceive you, at least. Yes, you are quite right. I am going to enjoy the thing dramatically. I don't want to go, but as I feel it discreet I intend to amuse myself, and make the best of it. I am going to play at being maternal and amiable, and even domesticated. I have a costume for it, as I have one for bathing and dining and making calls. This," she said, touching her dress, "is part of it. Upstairs I have a little mob-cap and an apron, and a work-basket to carry on my arm. They are not unbecoming, either. Shall I run up into the nursery and put them on, and show them to you? Then you can be sure that I comprehend the part."
"Have you a mob-cap and an apron?" asked Richard. "Have you, really?"
"Yes, really," she answered. "Don't you remember that I told you that it was my dresses that were of consequence, and not myself? Shall I go and put them on?"
Her tone was soft no longer; it was a little hard, and so was the look which half hid itself behind the brightness of the eyes she turned toward him.
"Yes," he answered. "Put them on, and let us see them."
She turned round and went out of the room, and Arbuthnot followed her with a rather anxious glance. The professor stirred his tea as usual, and Tredennis turned his attention to Janey, while Richard laughed.
"I have no doubt she has all three," he said. "And they will be well worth seeing."
They were worth seeing. In a few minutes she returned,—the little work-basket on her arm, the mob-cap upon her head, the apron around her waist, and a plain square of white muslin crossed upon her bosom. She stopped in the door-way, and made a courtesy.
"There ought to be a curtain, and somebody ought to ring it up," she said. "Enter the domestic virtues."
And she came and stood before them, her eyes shining still, and her head erect, but—perhaps through the rather severe black and white of her costume—seeming to have a shade less color than before.
"I did not make them for this occasion," she said. "They have appeared before. You don't remember them, Richard, but I had them when Jack was a baby—and a novelty. I tried being maternal then."
"Why, yes," said Richard, "to be sure I remember them,—and very becoming they were, too."
"Oh, yes," she answered. "I knew they were becoming!"
She turned and fronted Tredennis.
"I hope they are becoming now," she said, and made her little courtesy again.
"They are very becoming," he answered, looking ather steadily. "I like them better than—the silks and brocades."
"Thank you," she said. "I thought you would—or I would not have put them on. Jack and Janey, come and stand on each side of me while I sit down. I have always congratulated myself that you were becoming. This is what we shall be constrained to do when we are in Virginia, only we shall not have the incentive of being looked at."
"We will make up a party," said Richard, "and come down once a week to look at you. Planefield would enjoy it, I am sure."
"Thank you," said Bertha. "And I will always bring out the work-basket, with a lace-collar for Meg in it. Lace-collars are more becoming than small aprons or stocking-mending. Do you remember the little shirt Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was making for her boy, and which was always produced when she was in virtuous company? Poor Rawdon was quite a big boy, and very much too large for it, by the time it was finished. I wonder if Meg will be grown up before she gets her collar."
She produced a needle, threaded it, and took a few stitches, bending her head over her task with a serious air.
"Does it look as if I had done it before?" she said. "I hope it does. I really have, you know. Once I sewed on a button for Richard."
But she did not sew many minutes. Soon she laid her work down in the basket.
"There!" she said, "that is enough! I have made my impression, and that is all I care for—or Ishouldhave made my impression if you had been strangers. If you had not known me you would have had time to say to one another: 'What a simple, affectionate little creature she must be! After all, there is nothing which becomes a woman so well as to sit at her work in that quiet, natural way, with her children abouther!' Come, Jack and Janey, it is time for you to say good-night, and let me make a pretty exit with you, in my mob-cap and apron."
She took them away, and remained upstairs with them until they were in bed. When she came back she did not bring the work-basket, but she had not taken off the cap and handkerchief. She held an open letter in her hand, and went to Richard and sat down by him. Her manner had changed again entirely. It was as if she had left upstairs something more than the work-basket.
"Richard," she said, "I did not tell you I had had a letter from Agnes Sylvestre."
"From Agnes Sylvestre!" he exclaimed. "Why, no, you didn't! But it is good news. Laurence, you must remember Agnes Sylvestre!"
"Perfectly," was the answer. "She was not the kind of person you forget."
"She was a beautiful creature," said Richard, "and I always regretted that we lost sight of her as we did after her marriage. Where is she now, Bertha?"
"When she wrote she was at Castellamare. She went abroad, you know, immediately after her husband's death."
"He was not the nicest fellow in the world,—that Sylvestre," said Richard. "He was not the man for a woman like that to marry. I wonder if she did not find out that she had made a mistake?"
"If she did," said Bertha, "she bore it very well, and it has been all over for more than two years."
She turned suddenly to Tredennis.
"Did not you once tell me"—she began.
"Yes," he replied. "I met her in Chicago, and Mr. Sylvestre was with her."
"It must have been two or three weeks before his death," said Bertha. "He died quite suddenly, and they were in Chicago at the time. Do you remember how she looked, and if you liked her?—but of course you liked her."
"I saw her only for a short time," he answered. "We talked principally of you. She was very handsome, and had a sweet voice and large, calm eyes."
Bertha was silent a moment.
"Yes," she said next, "she has beautiful eyes. They are large and clear, like a child's, but they are not childish eyes. She sees a great deal with them. I think there was never anything more effective than a way she has of looking at you quietly and directly for a few seconds, without saying anything at all."
"You wonder what she is thinking of," said Arbuthnot. "And you hope she is thinking of yourself, and are inclined to believe she is, when there are ten chances to one that she is not at all."
"But she generally is," said Bertha. "The trouble is that perhaps she is not thinking exactly what you would like best, though she will never tell you so, and you would not discover it from her manner. She had an adorable manner; it is soft and well-bred, but she never wastes herself."
"I remember," said Tredennis, "that I thought her very attractive."
Bertha turned more directly toward him.
"She is exactly what you would like," she said,—"exactly. When I said just now that her way of looking at people was effective, I used the worst possible word, and did her an injustice. She is never effective—in that way. To be effective, it seems to me, you must apply yourself. Agnes Sylvestre never applies herself. Trifles do not amuse her as they amuse me. I entertain myself with my whims and with all sorts of people; she has no whims, and cares only for the people she is fond of. If she were here to-night she would look calmly at my mob-cap and apron, and wonder what I meant by them, and what mental process I had gone through to reach the point of finding it worth while to wear them."
"Oh," said Arbuthnot, "I should not think she was slow at following mental processes."
"No," answered Bertha, "I did not mean that. She would reason clearly enough, after she had looked at me a few moments and asked herself the question. But in talking of her I am forgetting to tell you that she is coming home, and will spend next winter in Washington."
"Congratulate yourself, Laurence," said Richard. "We may all congratulate ourselves. It will be something more to live for."
"As to congratulating myself," said Arbuthnot, "I should have no objection to devoting the remainder of the evening to it, but I am afraid"—
"Of what?" demanded Bertha.
"Oh," he answered, "she will see throughmewith her calm eyes; and, as you say, she never wastes herself."
"No," said Bertha, "she never wastes herself. And, after all, it is Colonel Tredennis who has most reason to congratulate himself. He has not thrown away his time. I am obliged to admit that she once said to me of you, 'Why does he throw away his time? Does he never think at all?' Yes, it is Colonel Tredennis who must be congratulated."
It was chiefly of Agnes Sylvestre they talked during the rest of the evening.
"She is a person who says very little of herself," was Bertha's comment, "but there is a great deal to say of her."
And so there seemed to be. There were anecdotes to be related of her, the charm of her beauty and manner was to be analyzed, and all of her attributes were found worth touching upon.
It was Tredennis who took his departure first. When he rose to go, Bertha, who was talking to Arbuthnot, did not at first observe his movement, and when he approached her she turned with an involuntary start.
"You—are going now?" she said.
"Yes," he answered. "I wish you a pleasant summer and all the rest you require."
She stood up and gave him her hand.
"Thank you," she replied. "I shall be sure to have the rest."
It scarcely seemed more than the ordinary conventional parting for the night; to Tredennis it seemed something less. There were only a few words more, and he dropped her hand and went out of the room.
He had certainly felt that this was the last, and only a powerful effort of will held in check a feeling whose strength he would have been loath to acknowledge.
"Such things are always a wrench," he said, mentally. "I never bore them well."
And he had barely said it when he heard Bertha cross the parlor quickly and pass through the door. He had bent to take up a paper he had left on the hat-stand, and when he turned she was close to him.
Something in her look was so unusual that he recognized it with an inward start. Her eyes were a little dilated, and her breath came with soft quickness, as if she had moved rapidly and impulsively. She put out both her hands with a simple, sudden gesture, and with an action as simple and unpremeditated he took them and held them in his own.
"I came," she said, "to say good-by again. All at once I seemed to—to realize that it would be months before I—we saw you again. And so many things happen, and—" She stopped a second, but went on after it. "When I come back," she said, "I shall be well and strong, and like a new person. Say good-by to this person;" and a smile came and went as she said it.
"A moment ago," he answered, "I was telling myself that good-byes were hard upon me."
"They—they are not easy," she said.
This, at least, was not easy for him. Her hands weretrembling in his clasp. The thought came to him that perhaps some agitation she wished to hide had driven her from the room within, and she had come to him for momentary refuge because he was near. She looked up at him for a second with a touch of desperation in her eyes, and then he saw her get over it, and she spoke.
"Jack and Janey will miss you very much," she said. "You have been very kind to them. I think—it is your way to be good to every one."
"My opportunities of being good have been limited," he said. "If—if one should present itself,"—and he held her hands a little closer,—"you won't let me miss my chance, will you? There is no reason for my saying so much, of course, but—but you will try to remember that I am here and always ready to come when I am called."
"Yes," she said, "I think you would come if I called you. And I thank you very much. And good-by—good-by."
And she drew her hands away and stood with them hanging clasped before her, as if she meant to steady them, and so she stood until he was gone.
He was breathing quickly himself when he reached the street.
"Yes," he said, "the professor was right. It is Arbuthnot—it is Arbuthnot."
When he passed the house the next day they were gone. The nursery windows were thrown open, and he fancied that the place wore a deserted look. The very streets seemed empty, and the glare of sunshine, whose heat increased with every hour, added to the air of desolateness he imagined.
"Itisimagination," he said. "And the feeling will die away all the more quickly because I recognize the unreality of it. By to-morrow or the day after I shall have got over it."
And yet a week later, when he dropped in upon the professor, one sultry evening, to spend an hour with him, his old friend found cause for anxious inspection of him.
"What," he said, "the hot weather begins to tell on you already! You are not acclimatized yet,—that's it. You must spare yourself as much as possible. It doesn't promise well that you look fagged so soon. I should say you had not slept well."
"I don't sleep well," Tredennis answered.
"You are working too hard," said the professor; "that is it, perhaps."
"I am not working hard enough," replied Tredennis, with a slight knitting of the brows. "I wish I had more to do. Leisure does not agree with me."
"One must occupy one's self!" said the professor. He spoke half-absently, and yet with a touch of significance in his tone which—combined with the fact that he had heard the words before—caused Tredennis to glance at him quickly.
He smiled slightly, in answer to the glance.
"Bertha?" he said. "Oh, yes, I am quoting Bertha.Your manner is not as light as hers, but it reminded me of her in some way; perhaps because I had a letter from her to-day, and she was in my thoughts."
"I hope she is well," said Tredennis, "and does not find her farm-house too dull."
"She does not complain of it," the professor answered. "And she says nothing of her own health, but tells me she is a little anxious about Janey, who does not seem quite herself."
Tredennis looked out into the darkening street. They were sitting by the opened window.
"She was not well when she went away," he said, a trifle abstractedly.
"Janey?" asked the professor, as if the idea was new to him; "I did not know that."
Tredennis roused himself.
"I—was thinking of Bertha," he said.
"Oh, of Bertha," said the professor, and then he lapsed into a reverie himself for a few moments; and seemed to watch the trees on the street without seeing them.
"No, she was not well," he said, at length; "but I think she will be better when she comes back."
"The rest and quiet"—began Tredennis.
"I think she had determined to be better," said the professor.
"Determined?" repeated Tredennis.
"She has a strong will," returned the professor, "though it is a thing she is never suspected of. She does not suspect herself of it, and yet she has relied upon its strength from the first, and is relying upon it now. I am convinced that she went away with the determination to conquer a restlessness whose significance she is just awakening to. And she deliberately chose nature and the society of her children as the best means of cure."
"Do you think," asked Tredennis, in a low voice, "that she will get over it?"
The professor turned to look at him.
"I don't know," he answered, with a slight tone of surprise. "Why did you fancy I would?"
"You seem to understand her," said Tredennis.
The professor sighed.
"I have studied her so long," he replied, "that I imagine I know what she isdoing, but you can't safely go beyond that with women; you can't say what they aregoingto do,—with any degree of certainty. They are absorbingly interesting as a study, but they are not to be relied on. And they rarely compliment your intelligence by doing what you expect of them.Shehas not done what I expected. She has lived longer than I thought she would without finding herself out. A year ago she believed that she had proved to herself that such an emotion as—as this was impossible to her. It was a very innocent belief, and she was entirely sincere in it, and congratulated herself upon it." He turned to Tredennis again with a sudden movement and a curious look of pain in his face. "I am afraid it's a great mistake," he said.
"What?" Tredennis asked.
"This—this feeling," he said, in a tremulous and troubled voice. "I don't mean in her alone, but in any one, everywhere. I am not sure that it ever brings happiness really in the end. I am afraid there alwaysisan end. If there wasn't, it might be different; but I am afraid there is. There are those of us who try to believe there is none, but—but I am afraid those are happiest who lose all but their ideal. There are many who lose even that, and Fate has done her worst by them." He checked himself, and sank back in his chair.
"Ah!" he said, smiling half sadly. "I am an old man—an old man,—and it is an old man's fancy, that the best thing in life is death. And Fate did not do her worst by me; she left me my ideal. She had gray eyes," he added, "and a bright face, like Bertha's.Perhaps, after all, if I had won what I wanted, I should not feel so old to-night, and so tired. Her face was very bright."
He had not been wholly well for some days, and to-night seemed fatigued by the heat and languor in the air, but he was somewhat more hopeful when he spoke of Bertha than he had been.
"I have confidence in the strength of her will," he said, "and I like her pride and courage. She does not give away to her emotions; she resents them fiercely, and refuses to acknowledge their powers over her. She insists to herself that her restlessness is nervousness, and her sadness morbid."
"She said as much to me," said Tredennis.
"Did she?" exclaimed the professor. "That is a good sign; it shows that she has confidence in you, and that it is a feeling strong enough to induce her to use you as a defence against her own weakness. She would never have spoken if she had not believed that you were a sort of stronghold. It is the old feeling of her girlhood ruling her again. Thank Heaven for that!"
There was a ring at the front-door bell as he spoke, and a moment or so later it was answered by a servant; buoyant feet were heard in the hall, and paused a second on the threshold.
"Are you here, Professor?" some one inquired. "And may I come in?"
Professor Herrick turned his head.
"Come in, Richard," he said; "come in, by all means." And Amory entered and advanced toward them.
The slight depression of manner Tredennis had fancied he had seen in him on the last two occasions of their meeting had disappeared altogether. He seemed even in gayer spirits than usual.
"I have come to tell you," he said to the professor, "that I am going away for a short time. It is a matter of business connected with the Westoria lands. I may be away a week or two."
"Isn't it rather a long journey?" asked the professor.
"Oh, yes," he replied, with no air of being daunted by the prospect,—"and a tiresome one, but it is important that I should make it, and I shall not be alone."
"Who is to be your companion?"
"Planefield—and he's rather an entertaining fellow, in his way—Planefield. Oh, it won't be so bad, on the whole."
"It is Planefield who is interested in the lands, if I remember rightly," suggested the professor.
"Oh, Planefield?" Richard replied, carelessly. "Well, more or less. He is given to interesting himself in things, and, by Jove!" he added with a laugh, "this promises to be a good thing to be interested in. I shouldn't mind if I"—
"My dear Richard," interposed the professor, "allow me to advise you not to do so. You'll really find it best. Such things rarely end well."
Richard laughed again.
"My dear Professor," he answered, with much good-humor, "you may rely upon me. I haven't any money of my own."
"And if you had money?" said the professor.
"I think I should risk it. I really do. Though why I should say risk, I hardly know. There is scarcely enough risk to make it exciting."
He was very sanguine, and once or twice became quite brilliant on the subject. The great railroad, which was to give the lands an enormous value, was almost an established fact; everything was being laid in train: a man influenced here, a touch given there, a vigorous move made in this direction, an interest awakened in that, and the thing was done.
"There isn't a doubt of the termination," he said, "not a doubt. It's a brilliant sort of thing that is its own impetus, one might say, and the right men are at work for it, and the right wom—"
"Were you going to say women?" asked Tredennis, when he pulled himself up somewhat abruptly.
"Well, yes," Richard said, blithely. "After all, why not? I must confess to finding the fact lend color and vivacity to the thing. And the delightful cleverness the clever ones show is a marvellous power for or against a thing, though I think the feminine tendency is to work for a thing, not against it."
"I should like to know," said Tredennis, "how they begin it."
For a moment he thought he did not know why he asked the question; but the self-delusion did not last long. He felt an instant later that he did know, and wished that he did not.
"In nine cases out of ten," Richard replied, giving himself up at once to an enjoyable analysis of the subject,—"in nine cases out of ten it is my impression they begin with almost entire lack of serious intention, and rarely, if ever, even in the end, admit to themselves that they have done what they are accused of. Given a clever and pretty woman whose husband or other male relative needs her assistance: why should she be less clever and pretty in the society of one political dignitary than in that of another, whose admiration of her charms may not be of such importance? I suppose that is the beginning, and then come the sense of power and the fascination of excitement. What woman does not like both? What woman is better and more charming than Bertha, and Bertha does not hesitate to admit, in her own delightful way, that there must have been a fascination in the lives of those historical charmers before whom prime ministers trembled, and who could make and unmake a cabinet with a smile."
"What," was the thought that leaped into Tredennis' mind, "do we begin to compare Bertha with a king's favorite!" But he did not say it aloud—it was not for him to defend her against her husband's lightness; and were they not her own words, after all? And so hecould only sit silent in the shadow of his darkening corner and knit his heavy brows with hot resentment in his heart, while Richard went on:
"There are some few who make a profession of it," he said; "but they do not carry the most power. The woman who is ambitious for her husband, or eager for her son, or who wishes to escape from herself and find refuge in some absorbing excitement, necessarily is more powerful than the more sordid element. If I were going in for that kind of thing," he went on, settling himself in his favorite graceful, lounging posture, and throwing his arm lightly behind his head,—"if I were going in for it, and might make a deliberate choice, I think I should choose a woman who had something to forget,—a woman who had reached an emotional crisis—who was young, and yet who could not take refuge in girlish forgetfulness, and who, in spite of her youth, had lived beyond trusting in the future—a woman who represented beauty, and wit, and despair (the despair would be the strongest lever of all). There isn't a doubt of it that such a woman, taken at such a turning-point in her existence, could move—the world, if you like—the world itself;" and he arranged himself a trifle more comfortably, and half-laughed again.
"But," suggested the professor, "you are not going in for that sort of thing, my dear Richard."
"Oh, no, no!" answered Richard; "butifI were, I must confess it would have a fascination for me which would not permit of my regarding it in cold blood. I am like Bertha, you know—I like my little drama."
"And, speaking of Bertha," said the professor, "if anything should happen while you are away"—
"Now, really," said Richard, "that shows what a careless fellow I am! Do you know, it never once occurred to me that anything could happen. We have such an admirable record to look back upon, Bertha and I, though I think I usually refer the fact to Bertha's tact and executive ability; nothing ever has happened, andI feel that we have established a precedent. But, if anything should happen, you had better telegraph to Merritsville. In any ordinary event, however, I feel quite safe in leaving Bertha in your hands and Tredennis's," he said, smiling at the large shadow in the corner. "One is always sure, in the midst of the ruling frivolity, that Tredennis is to be relied on."
He went away soon after, and Tredennis, bidding the professor good-night, left the house with him.
As they passed down the steps Richard put his arm through his companion's with caressing friendliness.
"It wouldn't do you any harm to take a run up into Virginia yourself, once in a while," he said. "You have been losing ground since the heat set in, and we can't submit to that. We need your muscular development in its highest form, as an example to our modern deterioration. Kill two birds with one stone when you have a day's leisure,—go and see Bertha and the children, and lay in a new supply of that delightful robustness we envy and admire."
"I should be glad to see Bertha," said Tredennis.
"She would be glad to see you," Richard answered. "And, while I am away, it will be a relief to me to feel that she has you to call upon in case of need. The professor—dear old fellow—is not as strong as he was. And you—as I said before—one naturally takes the liberty of relying upon your silent substantiality."
"Thank you," said Tredennis. "If it is a matter of avoirdupois"——
Richard turned quickly to look at him.
"Ah, no," he said, "not that; though, being human, we respect the avoirdupois. It's something else, you know. Upon my word, I can't exactly say what, but something which makes a man feel instinctively that he can shift his responsibilities upon you and they will be in good hands. Perhaps it is not an enviable quality in one's self, after all. Here am I, you see, shifting Bertha and the children off on your shoulders.
"If I can be of any use to Bertha and the children why not?" said Tredennis, tersely.
"Oh, but one might also say 'Why?'" returned Richard. "We haven't any claim on you, really, and yet we do it, or, rather,Ido it, which speaks all the more strongly for your generosity and trustworthiness."
"And you will be away"—Tredennis began.
"Two or three weeks. It might be more, but I think not. We separate here, I think, as I am going to drop in on Planefield. Good-night, and thanks."
"Good-night," responded Tredennis, and they shook hands and parted.
During the hot days and nights of the next few weeks Tredennis found life rather a dreary affair. Gradually the familiar faces he met on the avenue became fewer and fewer; the houses he knew one after another assumed their air of summer desertion, offering as their only evidences of life an occasional colored servant sunning him or herself on the steps; the crowds of nursery-maids, with their charges, thinned out in the parks, and the freshness of the leaves was lost under a coating of dust, while the countenances of those for whom there was no prospect of relief expressed either a languid sense of injury or the patience of despair.
"But, after all," Tredennis said, on two or three occasions, as he sat in one of the parks in the evening,—"after all, I suppose most of them have—an object," adding the last two words with a faint smile.
He was obliged to confess to himself that of late he found that the work which he had regarded as his object had ceased to satisfy him. He gave his attention to it with stern persistence, and refused to spare himself when he found his attention wandering; he even undertook additional labor, writing in his moments of leisure several notable articles upon various important questions of the day, and yet he had time left to hang heavily on his hands and fill him with weariness; and at last there came an evening when, after sitting in one of the parks until the lamps were lighted, he rose suddenly from his seat, and spoke as if to the silence and shadow about him.
"Why should I try to hide the truth from myself?" he said. "It is too late for that. I may as well face it like a man, and bear it like one. Many a bravefellow has carried a bullet in his body down to his grave, and seldom winced. This is something like that, I suppose, only that pain"—And he drew a sharp, hard breath, and walked away down the deserted path without ending the sentence.
He made a struggle after this to resist one poor temptation which beset him daily,—the temptation to pass through the street in which stood the familiar house, with its drawn blinds and closed doors. Sometimes, when he rose in the morning, he was so filled with an unreasoning yearning for a sight of its blankness that he was overwhelmed by it, and went out before he breakfasted.
"It is weakness and self-indulgence," he would say; "but it is a very little thing, and it can hurt no one—it is only a little thing, after all." And he found a piteous pleasure—at which at first he tried to smile, but at which before long he ceased even to try to smile—in the slow walk down the street, on which he could see this window or that, and remember some day when he had caught a glimpse of Bertha through it, or some night he had spent in the room within when she had been gayer than usual, or quieter,—when she had given him some new wound, perhaps, or when she had half-healed an old one in some mood of relenting he had not understood.
"There is no reason why I should understand any woman," was his simple thought. "And why should I understand her, unless she chose to let me? She is like no other woman."
He was quite sure of this. In his thoughts of her he found every word and act of hers worth remembering and even repeating mentally again and again for the sake of the magnetic grace which belonged only to herself, and it never once occurred to him that his own deep sympathy and tender fancy might brighten all she did.
"When she speaks," he thought, "how the dullest of them stir and listen! When she moves across a room, how natural it is to turn and look at her, and beinterested in what she is going to do! What life I have seen her put in some poor, awkward wretch by only seating herself near him and speaking to him of some common thing! One does not know what her gift is, and whether it is well for her or ill that it was given her, but one sees it in the simplest thing she does."
It was hard to avoid giving himself up to such thoughts as these, and when he most needed refuge from them he always sought it in the society of the professor; so there were few evenings when he did not spend an hour or so with him, and their friendship grew and waxed strong until there could scarcely have been a closer bond between them.
About two weeks after Richard Amory's departure, making his call later than usual one evening, he met, coming down the steps, Mr. Arbuthnot, who stopped, with his usual civility, to shake hands with him.
"It is some weeks since we have crossed each other's paths, colonel," he said, scrutinizing him rather closely: "and, in the meantime, I am afraid you have not been well."
"Amory called my attention to the fact a short time ago," responded Tredennis, "and so did the professor. So, perhaps, there is some truth in it. I hadn't noticed it myself."
"You will presently, I assure you," said Arbuthnot, still regarding him with an air of interest. "Perhaps Washington doesn't agree with you. I have heard of people who couldn't stand it. They usually called it malaria, but I think there was generally something"—He checked himself somewhat abruptly, which was a rather unusual demonstration on his part, as it was his habit to weigh his speech with laudable care and deliberation. "You are going to see the professor?" he inquired.
"Yes," answered Tredennis.
The idea was presenting itself to his mind that there was a suggestion of something unusual in the questioner'smanner; that it was not so entirely serene as was customary; that there was even a hint of some inward excitement strong enough to be repressed only by an effort. And the consciousness of this impressed itself upon him even while a flow of light talk went on, and Arbuthnot smiled at him from his upper step.
"I have been to see the professor, too," he was saying, "and I felt it was something of an audacity. His invitations to me have always been of the most general nature; but I thought I would take the liberty of pretending that I fancied he regarded them seriously. He was very good to me, and exhibited wonderful presence of mind in not revealing that he was surprised to see me. I tried not to stay long enough to tire him, and he was sufficiently amiable to ask me to come again. He evidently appreciated the desolation of my circumstances."
"You are finding it dull?" said Tredennis.
"Dull!" repeated Arbuthnot. "Yes; I think you might call it dull. The people who kindly condescend to notice me in the winter have gone away, and my dress-coat is packed in camphor. I have ceased to be useful; and, even if Fate had permitted me to be ornamental, where should I air my charms? There seems really no reason why I should exist, until next winter, when I may be useful again, and receive in return my modicum of entertainment. To be merely a superior young man in a department is not remunerative in summer, as one ceases to glean the results of one's superiority. At present I might as well be inferior, and neither dance, nor talk, nor sing, and be utterly incapacitated by nature for either carrying wraps or picking up handkerchiefs; and you cannot disport yourself at the watering-places of the rich and great on a salary of a hundred dollars a month; and you could only get your sordid 'month's leave,' if such a thing were possible."
"I—have been dull myself," said Tredennis, hesitantly.
"If it should ever occur to you to drop in and see afellow-sufferer," said Arbuthnot, "it would relieve the monotony ofmylot, at least, and might awaken in me some generous emotions."
Tredennis looked up at him.
"It never has occurred to you so far, I see," was Arbuthnot's light reply to the look; "but, if it should, don't resist the impulse. I can assure you it is a laudable one. And my humble apartment has the advantage of comparative coolness."
When Tredennis entered the library he found the professor sitting in his usual summer seat, near the window. A newspaper lay open on his knee, but he was not reading it; he seemed, indeed, to have fallen into a reverie of a rather puzzling kind.
"Did you meet any one as you came in?" he asked of Tredennis, as soon as they had exchanged greetings.
"I met Mr. Arbuthnot," Tredennis answered, "and stopped a few moments on the steps to talk to him."
"He has been entertaining me for the last hour," said the professor, taking off his glasses and beginning to polish them. "Now, will you tell me," he asked, with his quiet air of reflective inquiry into an interesting subject,—"will you tell me why he comes to entertainme?"
"He gave me the impression," answered Tredennis, "that his object in coming was that you might entertain him, and he added that you were very good to him, and he appeared to have enjoyed his call very much."
"That is his way," responded the professor, impartially. "And a most agreeable way it is. To be born with such a way as a natural heritage is to be a social millionnaire. And the worst of it is, that it may be a gift entirely apart from all morals and substantial virtues. Bertha has it. I don't know where she got it. Not from me, and not from her poor mother. I say itmay beapart from all morals and substantial virtues. I don't say it always is. I haven't at all made up my mind what attributes go along with it in Arbuthnot'scase. I should like to decide. But it would be an agreeable way in a criminal of the deepest dye. It is certainly agreeable that he should in some subtle manner be able to place me in the picturesque attitude of a dignified and entertaining host. I didn't entertain him at all," he added, simply. "I sat and listened to him."
"He is frequently well worth listening to," commented Tredennis.
"He was well worth listening to this evening," said the professor. "And yet he was light enough. He had two or three English periodicals under his arm,—one of them was 'Punch,'—and—and I found myself laughing quite heartily over it. And then there was something about a new comic opera, and he seemed to know the libretto by heart, and ran over an air or so on the piano. And he had been reading a new book, and was rather clever about it—in his way, of course, but still it was cleverness. And then he went to the piano again and sang a captivating little love-song very well, and, after it, got up and said good-night—and on the whole I regretted it. I liked his pictures, I liked his opera, I liked his talk of the book, and I liked his little love-song. And how should he know that an old dry-bones would like a tender little ballad and be touched by it, and pleased because his sentiment was discovered and pandered to? Oh, it is the old story. It's his way—it's the way."
"I am beginning to think," said Tredennis, slowly, "that 'his way' might be called sympathy and good feeling and fine tact, if one wanted to be specially fair to him."
The professor looked up rather quickly.
"I thought you did not like him," he said.
Tredennis paused a moment, looking down at the carpet as if deliberating.
"I don't think I do," he said at length; "but it's no fault of his—the fault lies in me. I haven't the way, and I am at a disadvantage with him. He is never at aloss, and I am; he is ready-witted and self-possessed; I am slow and rigid, and I suppose it is human that I should try to imagine at times that I am at a disadvantage only because my virtues are more solid than his. They are not more solid; they are only more clumsy and less available."
"You don't spare yourself," said the professor.
"Why should I spare myself?" said Tredennis, knitting his brows. "After all,henever spares himself. He knows better. He would be just to me. Why should I let him place me at a disadvantage again by being unjust to him? And why should we insist that the only good qualities are those which are unornamental? It is a popular fallacy. We like to believe it. It is very easy to suspect a man of being shallow because we are sure we are deep and he is unlike us. This Arbuthnot"—
"'This Arbuthnot,'" interposed the professor, with a smile. "It is curious enough to hear you entering upon a defence of 'this Arbuthnot.' You don't like him, Philip. You don't like him."
"I don't like myself," said Tredennis, "when I am compared with him; and I don't like the tendency I discover in myself, the tendency to disparage him. I should like to be fair to him, and I find it difficult."
"Upon my word," said the professor, "it is rather fine in you to make the effort, but"—giving him one of the old admiring looks—"you are always rather fine, Philip."
"It would be finer, sir," said Tredennis, coloring, "if it were not an effort."
"No," said the professor, quietly, "it would not be half so fine." And he put out his hand and let it rest upon the arm of the chair in which Tredennis sat, and so it rested as long as their talk went on.
In the meantime Arbuthnot walked rather slowly down the street, quite conscious of finding it necessary to make something of an effort to compose himself. Itwas his recognition of this necessity which had caused him to change his first intention of returning to his bachelor apartment after having made his call upon Professor Herrick. And he felt the necessity all the more strongly after his brief encounter with Colonel Tredennis.
"I will go into the park and think it over," he said to himself. "I'll give myself time."
He turned into Lafayette Park, found a quiet seat, and took out a very excellent cigar. He was not entirely surprised to see that, as he held the match to it, his hand was not as steady as usual. Tredennis had thought him a little pale.
The subject of his reflections, as he smoked his cigar, was a comparatively trivial incident; taken by itself, but he had not taken it by itself, because in a flash it had connected itself with a score of others, which at the times of their occurring had borne no significance whatever to him.
His visit to the professor had not been made without reasons; but they had been such reasons as, simply stated to the majority of his ordinary acquaintance, would have been received with open amazement or polite discredit, and this principally because they were such very simple reasons indeed. If such persons had been told that, finding himself without any vestige of entertainment, he had wandered in upon the professor as a last resource, or that he had wished to ask of him some trivial favor, or that he had made his call without any reason whatever, they would have felt such a state of affairs probable enough; but being informed that while sitting in the easiest of chairs, in the coolest possiblenegligée, reading an agreeable piece of light literature, and smoking a cigar before his open window, he had caught sight of the professor athiswindow, sitting with his head resting on his hand, and being struck vaguely by some air of desolateness and lassitude in the solitary old figure, had calmly laid aside book and cigar,had put himself into conventional attire, and had walked across the street with no other intention than that of making the best of gifts of entertainment it was certainly not his habit to overvalue,—those to whom the explanation had been made would have taken the liberty of feeling it somewhat insufficient, and would, in nine cases out of ten, privately have provided themselves with a more complicated one, cautiously insuring themselves against imposture by rejecting at the outset the simple and unvarnished truth.
Upon the whole, the visit had been a success. On entering, it is true, he found himself called upon to admire the rapidity with which the professor recovered from his surprise at seeing him; but, as he had not been deluded by any hope that his first appearance would awaken unmistakable delight, he managed to make the best of the situation. His opening remarks upon the subject of the weather were not altogether infelicitous, and then he produced his late number of "Punch," and the professor laughed, and, the ice being broken, conversation flourished, and there was no further difficulty. He discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that he was in better conversational trim than usual.
"It is a delusive condition to be in," he explained to the professor; "but experience has taught me not to be taken in by it and expect future development. It won't continue, as you no doubt suspect. It is the result of entire social stagnation for several weeks. I am merely letting off all my fireworks at once, inspired to the improvidence by your presence. I am a poor creature, as you know; but even a poor creature is likely to suffer from an idea a day. The mental accumulations of this summer, carefully economized, will support me in penury during the entire ensuing season. I only conjure you not to betray me when you hear me repeat the same things by instalments at Mrs. Amory's evenings."
And, saying it, he saw the professor's face change in some subtle way as he looked at him. What there wasin this look and change to make him conscious of an inward start he could not have told. It was the merest lifting of the lids, combined with an almost imperceptible movement of the muscles about the mouth; and yet he found it difficult to avoid pausing for a moment. But he accomplished the feat, and felt he had reason to be rather proud of it. "Though what there is to startle him in my mention of Mrs. Amory's evenings," he reflected, "it would require an intellect to explain."
Being somewhat given to finding entertainment in quiet speculation upon passing events, he would doubtless have given some attention to the incident, even if it had remained a solitary unexplained and mystifying trifle. But it was not left to stand alone in his mind.
It was not fifteen minutes before, in drawing his handkerchief from his breast-pocket, he accidentally drew forth with it a letter, which fell upon the newspaper lying upon the professor's lap, and for a moment rested there with the address upward.
And the instant he glanced from the pretty feminine envelope to the professor's face Arbuthnot recognized the fact that something altogether unexpected had occurred again.
As he had looked from the envelope to the professor, so the professor looked from the envelope to him. Then he picked the letter up and returned it.
"It is a letter," Arbuthnot began,—"a letter"—and paused ignominiously.
"Yes," said the professor, as if he had lost something of his own gentle self-possession. "I see it is a letter."
It was not a happy remark, nor did Arbuthnot feel his own next effort a particularly successful one.
"It is a letter from Mrs. Amory," he said. "She is kind enough to write to me occasionally."
"Yes," responded the professor. "I saw that it was from Bertha. Her hand is easily recognized."
"It is an unusual hand," said Arbuthnot. "And her letters are very like herself. When it occurs to her toremember me—which doesn't happen as frequently as I could wish—I consider myself fortunate. She writes as she talks, and very few people do that."
He ended with a greater degree of composure than he had begun with, but to his surprise he felt that his pulses had quickened, and that there had risen to his face a touch of warmth suggestive of some increase of color, and he did not enjoy the sensation. He began to open the letter.
"Shall I"—he said, and then suddenly stopped.
He knew why he had stopped, but the professor did not, and to make the pause and return the letter to its envelope and its place in his pocket without an explanation required something like hardihood.
"She is well, and seems to be taking advantage of the opportunity to rest," he said, and picked up his "Punch" again, returning to his half-finished comment upon its cartoon as if no interruption had taken place.
As he sat on his seat in the park, apparently given up to undivided enjoyment of his cigar, his mind was filled with a tumult of thought. He had not been under the influence of such mental excitement for years. Suddenly he found himself confronting a revelation perfectly astounding to him.
"And soIam the man!" he said, at last. "Iam the man!"
He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at the end of it with an air of deliberate reflection, as is the masculine habit.
"It doesn't say much for me," he added, "that I never once suspected it—not once."
Then he replaced his cigar, with something like a sigh.
"We are a blind lot," he said.
He did not feel the situation a pleasant one; there were circumstances under which he would have resented it with a vigor and happy ingenuity of resource which would have stood him in good stead; but there was noresentment in his present mood. From the moment the truth had dawned upon him, he had treated it without even the most indirect reference to his own very natural feelings, and there had been more sacrifice of himself and his own peculiarities in his action when he had returned the letter to his pocket than even he himself realized.
"It was not the letter to show him," was his thought. "She does not know how much she tells me. He would have understood it as I do."
He went over a good deal of ground mentally as he sat in the deepening dusk, and he thought clearly and dispassionately, as was his habit when he allowed himself to think at all. By the time he had arrived at his conclusions it was quite dark. Then he threw the end of his last cigar away and arose, and there was no denying that he was pale still, and wore a curiously intense expression.
"If there is one thing neither man nor devil can put a stop to," he said, "it is an experience such as that. It will go on to one of two ends,—it will kill her, or she will kill it. The wider of the mark they shoot, the easier for her; and as for me," he added, with a rather faint and dreary smile, "perhaps it suits me well enough to be merely an alleviating circumstance. It's all I'm good for. Let them think as they please."
And he brushed an atom of cigar-ash from his sleeve with his rather too finely feminine hand, and walked away.