"It wasyouwho did that?" she said, when he had finished.
"I was only one of the company," he answered, abashed, "and obeyed orders. Of course a man obeys orders."
When he took her hand to assist her to rise he felt it tremble in his own.
"It was not a pleasant story," he said. "I ought not to have told it to you."
They scarcely spoke at all as they descended. He did not understand his own unreasoning happiness. What reason was there for it, after all? If he had argued the matter, he was in the mood to have said that what he gained in the strange sweetness of the flying moments could only hurt himself, and was enough in itself to repay him for any sense of pain and loss which might follow. But he did not argue at all. In Laurence Arbuthnot's place he would scarcely have given himself the latitude he was giving himself now.
"It is safe enough forme," was the sharp-edged thought which had cut through all others once or twice. "It is safe enough formeto be as happy as I may."
But he forgot this as they went down the hill, side by side. For the time being he only felt, and each glance he turned upon Bertha's downcast face gave him cause to realize, what intensity his feelings had reached, and wakened him to that sudden starting of pulse and heart which is almost a pain. When they reached the house Bertha went in search of Janey. She remained with her for about half an hour, and then came out to the hammock with her work-basket. The carnations at her waist were crushed a little, and something of the first freshness of her holiday air was gone. She held a letter in her hand, which she had evidently been reading. She had not returned it to its envelope, and it was still half open.
"It is from Richard," she said, after she had takenher seat in the hammock. "It was brought in from the post-office at Lowville about an hour ago."
"From Richard?" he said. "He is coming home, I suppose."
"No," she answered, looking down at the closely written sheets,—"he is not coming yet. He was wise enough not to take a serious view of Janey's case. He is very encouraging, and expresses his usual confidence in my management."
There was nothing like bitterness in her voice, and it struck him that he had never seen so little expression of any kind in her face. She opened the letter and looked over the first page of it.
"He has a great many interesting things to say," she went on; "and he is very enthusiastic."
"About what?" Tredennis asked. She looked up.
"About the Westoria lands," she answered. "He finds all sorts of complications of good fortune connected with them. I don't understand them all, by any means. I am not good at business. But it seems as though the persons who own the Westoria lands will be able to command the resources of the entire surrounding country,—if the railroad is carried through; of course it all depends upon the railroad."
"And the railroad," suggested Tredennis, "depends upon"—
"I don't know," she replied. "On several people, I suppose. I wish it depended on me."
"Why?" said Tredennis.
She smiled slightly and rather languidly.
"I should like to feel that anything so important depended on me," she said. "I should like the sense of power. I am very fond of power."
"I once heard it said that you had a great deal of it," Tredennis said; "far more than most women."
She smiled again, a trifle less languidly.
"That is Laurence Arbuthnot," she observed. "I always recognize his remarks when I hear them. Hedid not mean a compliment exactly, either, though it sounds rather like one. He has a theory that I affect people strongly, and he chooses to call that power. But it is too trivial. It is only a matter of pleasing or displeasing, and I am obliged to exert myself. It does not enable me to bestow things, and be a potentate. I think that to be a potentate might console one for a great many things,—and for the lack of a great many. If you can't take, it must distract your attention to be able to give."
"I do not like to hear you speak as if the chief thing to be desired was the ability to distract one's self," Tredennis said.
She paused a second.
"Then," she said, "I will not speak so now. To-day I will do nothing you do not like." Then she added, "As it is your last day, I wish to retrieve myself."
"What have you to retrieve?" he asked.
"Myself," she answered, "as I said."
She spread the letter upon her lap, and gave her attention to it.
"Isn't it rather like Richard," she said, "that, when he begins to write, he invariably writes a letter like that? Theoretically he detests correspondence, but when he once begins, his letter always interests him, and even awakens him to a kind of enthusiasm, so that instead of being brief he tells one everything. He has written twelve pages here, and it is all delightful."
"That is a wonderful thing to do," remarked Tredennis; "but it does not surprise me in Richard."
"No," she replied, "Richard can always interest himself; or, rather, he does not interesthimself,—it is that he is interested without making an effort; that is his strong point."
She replaced the letter in the envelope and laid it in the basket, from which she took a strip of lace-work, beginning to employ herself with it in a manner more suggestive of graceful leisure than of industriousintention. It seemed to accentuate the fact that they had nothing to do but let the day drift by in luxurious idleness.
But Tredennis could not help seeing that for a while the tone of her mood, so to speak, was lowered. And yet, curiously enough, nothing of his own dreamy exaltation died away. The subtle shadow which seemed to have touched her, for a moment, only intensified his feeling of tenderness. In fact there were few things which would not have so intensified it; his mental condition was one which must advance by steady, silent steps of development to its climax. He was not by nature a reckless man, but he was by no means unconscious that there was something very like recklessness in his humor this last day.
As for the day itself, it also advanced by steady steps to its climax, unfolding its beauties like a perfect flower. The fresh, rain-washed morning drifted into a warm, languorous noon, followed by an afternoon so long and golden that it seemed to hold within itself the flower and sun, shade and perfume, of a whole summer. Tredennis had never known so long an afternoon, he thought, and yet it was only lengthened by the strange delight each hour brought with it, and was all too short when it was over. It seemed full of minute details, which presented themselves to his mind at the time as discoveries. Bertha worked upon her lace, and he watched her, waiting for the moment when she would look up at him, and then look down again with a quick or slow droop of the lids, which impressed itself upon him as a charm in itself. There was a little ring she wore which made itself a memory to him,—a simple turquoise, which set upon the whiteness of her hand like a blue flower. He saw, with a new sense of recognition, every fold and line of her thin, white drapery, the slight, girlish roundness of her figure, the dashes of brightness in the color of her hair, the smallness of the gold thimble on her finger, her grace when she rose orsat down, or rested a little against the red cushions in her hammock, touching the ground now and then with her slender slipper and swaying lightly to and fro.
"Do you know," he said to her once, as he watched her do this, "do you know,"—with absorbed hesitation,—"that I feel as if—as if I had never really seen you until to-day—until this afternoon. You seem somehow to look different."
"I am not sure," she answered, "that I have ever seen you before; but it is not because you look different."
"Why is it?" he asked, quite ready to relinquish any idea of his own in the pursuit of one of hers.
She looked down a moment.
"To-day," she said, "I don't think you have anything against me."
"You think," he returned, "that I have usually something against you?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Will you tell me what you think it is?"
"I do not need to tell you," she said. "You know so well—and it would rather hurt me to put it into words."
"Hurt you?" he repeated.
"I should be harder than I am," she returned, "if it had not hurt me to know it myself—though I would not tell you that at any other time than now. I dare say I shall repent it to-morrow," she said.
"No," he answered, "you won't repent it. Don't repent it."
He felt the vehemence of his speech too late to check it. When he ended she was silent, and it was as if suddenly a light veil had fallen upon her face, and he felt that, too, and tried to be calmer.
"No," he repeated, "you must not repent. It is I who must repent that I have given you even a little pain. It is hard on me to know that I have done that."
The afternoon stretched its golden length to a sunsetwhich cast deep, velvet shadows upon the grass and filled the air with an enchanted mellow radiance. Everything took a tinge of gold,—the green of the pines and the broad-leaved chestnut trees, the gray and brown of their trunks, the red of the old house, the honeysuckle and Virginia creeper clambering about it, the birds flying homeward to their nests. When the rich clearness and depth of color reached its greatest beauty Bertha folded her strip of lace and laid it in the little basket.
"We ought simply to sit and watch this," she said. "I don't think we ought even to speak. It will be all over in a few minutes, and we shall never see it again."
"No," said Tredennis, with a sad prescience; "nor anything at all like it."
"Ah!" was Bertha's rejoinder, "tomeit has always seemed that it is not the best of such hours that onedoessee others like them. I have seen the sun set like this before."
"Ihave not," he said.
As he stood silent in the stillness and glow a faint, rather bitter, smile touched his lips and faded out. He found himself, he fancied, face to face with Laurence Arbuthnot again. He was sharing the sunset with him; there were ten chances against one that he had shared the day with him also.
Bertha sat in the deepening enchanted light with a soft, dreamy look. He thought it meant that she remembered something; but he felt that the memory was one to which she yielded herself without reluctance, or that she was happy in it. At last she lifted her eyes to his, and their expression was very sweet in its entire gentleness and submission to the spell of the moment.
"See!" she said, "the sun has slipped behind the pines already. We have only a few seconds left."
And then, even as they looked at the great fire, made brighter by the dark branches through which they saw it, it sank a little lower, and a little lower, and with an expiring flame was gone.
Bertha drew a quick breath, there was a second or so of silence, and then she stirred.
"It is over," she said; "and it has been like watching some one die, only sadder."
She took up the little work-basket and rose from her seat.
"It seems a pity to speak of mundane things," she said; "but I think we must go in to tea."
When the children were taken upstairs for the night Bertha went with them. It had been her habit to do this during their sojourn in the country, and naturally Janey had been her special care of late.
"I cannot often do such things when I am in Washington," she had explained once to Tredennis. "And I really like it as much as they do. It is part of the holiday."
As he sat on the porch in the starlight Tredennis could hear her voice mingling with the children's. The windows were wide open; she was moving from one room to the other, and two or three times she laughed in answer to some childish speech.
It was one of these laughs which, at last, caused Tredennis to leave his seat and go to the place under the trees where the hammocks were swung, and which was far more the place of general rendezvous than the parlor windows. From this point he could see the corner of the brightly lighted room, near the window where it was Bertha's custom to sit in her low chair, and rock Janey to sleep when she was restless.
She was doing it to-night. He could see the child's head lying on her bosom, and her own bent so that her cheek rested against the bright hair. In a few moments all was quiet, and she began to sing, and as she sang, swaying to and fro, Tredennis looked and listened without stirring.
But, though it was gay no longer, he liked to hear her song, and to his mind the moments in which hestood in the odorous dark, looking upward at the picture framed by the vine-hung window, were among the tenderest of the day. It was his fate to be full of a homely sentiment, which found its pleasure in unsophisticated primary virtues and affections. Any deep passion he might be moved by would necessarily have its foundation in such elements. He was slow at the subtle analysis whose final result is frequently to rob such simplicities of their value. His tendency was to reverence for age, tenderness to womanhood and childhood, faithfulness to all things. There was something boyish and quixotic in his readiness to kindle in defence of any womanly weakness or pain. Nothing he had ever said, or done, had so keenly touched and delighted Professor Herrick as his fiery denunciation, one night, of a man who was the hero of a scandalous story. There had been no qualifications of his sweeping assertion that in such cases it must be the man who had earned the right to bear the blame.
"It isalwaysthe man who is in the wrong," he had cried, flushing fiercely, "coward and devil—it is in the nature of things that he should be. Let him stand at the front and take what follows, if he has ever been a man for an hour!" And the professor had flushed also,—the fainter flush of age,—and had given some silent moments to reflection afterwards, as he sat gazing at the fire.
It was these primitive beliefs and sentiments which stirred within him now. He would not have lost one low note of the little song for the world, and he had left his seat only that he might see what he saw now,—her arm about her child, her cheek pressed against its hair.
It was not long before her little burden fell asleep he saw, but she did not rise as soon as this happened. She sat longer, and her song went on, finally dying away into brooding silence, which reigned for some time before she moved.
At length she lifted her face gently. She lookeddown at the child a few seconds, and slowly changed the position in which she lay, with an indescribably tender and cautious movement. Then she rose, and after standing an instant, holding her in her folding arms, crossed the room and passed out of sight.
Tredennis turned and began mechanically to arrange the cushions in the hammock. He felt sure she would come to-night and talk to him, for a little while at least.
It was not very long before he recognized her white figure in the door-way, and went toward it.
"They are all asleep," she said, in a voice whose hushed tone seemed to belong half to the slumber she had left and half to the stillness of the hour.
"Will you come out to the hammock," he said, "or will you sit here?"
She came forward and descended the steps.
"I will sit in the hammock," she replied. "I like the trees above me."
They went down the path together, and reaching the hammock she took her usual seat among its cushions, and he his upon a rough rustic bench near her.
"I was thinking before you came," he said, "of what you said this afternoon of my having something against you. I won't deny that there has been something in my thoughts of you that often has been miserable, and you were right in saying it was not in them to-day. It has not been in them for several days. What I was thinking just now was that it could never be in them again."
She did not stir.
"Don't you see," he went on, "I can't go back. If there had been nothing but to-day, I could not go back—beyond to-day. It would always be a factor in my arguments about you. I should always say to myself when things seemed to go wrong: 'There was no mistake about that day,—she was real then,' and I should trust you against everything. To-day—and in the other days too—I have seen you as you are, andbecause of that I should trust you in spite of everything."
"Oh!" she cried. "Don't trust me too much!" There was anguish in the sound, and he recognized it.
"I can't trust you too much," he answered, with obstinacy. "No honest human being can trust another honest human being too much."
"Am I an honest human being?" she said.
"I shall believe you one until the end," he returned.
"That is saying a great deal," was her reply.
"Listen," he said. "You know I am not like Arbuthnot and the rest. If I were to try to be like them I should only fail. But, though you never told me that I could be of any use to you, and you never will, I shall know if the time should come—and I shall wait for it. Have we not all of us something that belongs to ourselves, and not to the world,—it may be a pleasure or a pain, it does not matter which?"
"No," she put in, "it does not matter which."
"It does not matter to those on the outside," he went on; "it only matters to us, and I think we all have it to bear. Even I"—
"What," she said, "you, too?"
"Yes," he answered, "I, too; but it does not matter, if no one is hurt but ourselves."
"There are so many things that 'do not matter,'" she said. "To say that, only means that there is no help."
"That is true," was his reply, "and I did not intend to speak of myself, but of you."
"No," she said, "don't speak of me,—don't speak of me!"
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I tell you that you are trusting me too much."
"Go on," he said.
She had covered her face with her hands, and heldthem so for a little while, then she let them fall slowly to her lap.
"If I tell you the truth," she said, "it will not be my fault if you still trust me too much. I don't want it to be my fault. The worst of me is, that I am neither bad nor good, and that I cannot live without excitement. I am always changing and trying experiments. When one experiment fails, I try another. They all fail after a while, or I get tired of them."
"Poor child!" he said.
She stirred slightly; one of the flowers fell from her belt upon her lap, and she let it lie there.
"It does not matter," she answered. "All that matters is, that you should know the truth about me,—that I am not to be depended upon, and that, above all, you need not be surprised at any change you see in me."
"When we meet again in Washington?" he suggested.
She hesitated a moment and then made her response.
"When we meet again in Washington, or at any time."
"Are you warning me?" he inquired.
"Yes," was her reply, and he recognized that in spite of her effort it was faintly given. "I am warning you."
He looked down at the grass and then at her. The determined squareness of chin, which was one of the chief characteristics of his face, struck her as being more marked than she had ever seen it.
"It is unnecessary," he said. "I won't profit by it."
He rose abruptly from his seat, and there was meaning in the movement, and in his eyes looking down upon her deep and dark in the faint light.
"You cannot changeme," he said. "And you would have to change me before your warning would carry weight. Change yourself as you like—try as many experiments as you like—you cannot change the last ten days."
Even as the words were uttered, the day was ended for them as they had never once thought of its ending. There fell upon the quiet the sound of horses' feetapproaching at a rapid pace and coming to a stop before the gate. The dogs came bounding and baying from the house, and above their deep-mouthed barking a voice made itself heard, calling to some one to come out,—a voice they both knew.
Tredennis turned toward it with a sharp movement.
"Do you hear that?" he exclaimed.
"Yes," said Bertha; and suddenly her manner was calm almost to coldness,—"it is Laurence Arbuthnot, and papa is with him. Let us go and meet them."
And in a few seconds they were at the gate, and the professor was explaining their unexpected appearance.
"It is all Mr. Arbuthnot's fault, my dear," he said; "he knew that I wished to see you, and, having an idea that I was not strong enough to make the journey alone, he suddenly affected to have business in this vicinity. It was entirely untrue, and I was not in the least deceived; but I humored him, as I begin to find it best to do, and allowed him to bring me to you."
Arbuthnot had dismounted, and was fastening his horse to the gate, and he replied by one of the gayest and most discriminatingly pitched of the invaluable laughs.
"It is no use," he said; "the professor does not believe in me. He refuses to recognize in me anything but hollow mockery."
Bertha went to him. There was something hurried in her movement; it was as if she was strangely, almost feverishly, glad to see him. She went to his horse's head and laid her hand on the creature's neck.
"That takes me back to Washington," she said: "to Washington. It was like you to come, and I am glad, but—you should have come a little sooner."
And, as she stood there, faintly smiling up at him, her hand was trembling like a leaf.
It was New-Year's day, and His Excellency the President had had several months in which to endeavor to adjust himself to the exigencies of his position; though whether he had accomplished this with a result of entire satisfaction to himself and all parties concerned and unconcerned, had, perhaps unfortunately, not been a matter of record. According to a time-honored custom, he had been placed at the slight disadvantage of being called upon to receive, from time to time, the opinions of the nation concerning himself without the opportunity of expressing, with any degree of publicity, his own opinions regarding the nation; no bold spirit having as yet suggested that such a line of procedure might at least be embellished with the advantage of entire novelty, apart from the possibility of its calling forth such originality and force of statement as would present to the national mind questions never before discussed, and perhaps not wholly unimportant. All had, however, been done which could be done by a nation justly distinguished for its patriotic consideration for, and courtesy toward, the fortunate persons elevated to the position of representing its dignity at home and abroad. Nothing which could add to that dignity had been neglected; no effort which could place it in its proper light, and remove all difficulty from the pathway of the figure endeavoring creditably to support it, had been spared. The character of the successful candidate for presidential office having been, during the campaign, effectually disposed of,—his morals having been impugned, his honor rent to tatters, his intellectual capacity pronounced far below the lowest average,—united good feeling was the result, andthere seemed little more to attain. His past had been exhausted. Every event of his political career and domestic life had been held up to public derision, laudation, and criticism. It had been successfully proved that his education had been entirely neglected, and that his advantages had been marvellous; that he had read Greek at the tender age of four years, and that he had not learned to read at all until he attained his majority; that his wife had taught him his letters, and that he had taught his wife to spell; that he was a liar, a forger, and a thief; that he was a model of virtue, probity, and honor,—each and all of which incontrovertible facts had been public property and a source of national pride and delight.
After the election, however, the fact that he had had a past at all had ceased to be of any moment whatever. A future—of four years—lay before him, and must be utilized; after that, the Deluge. The opposing party sneered, vilified, and vaunted themselves in the truth of their predictions concerning his incapacity; the non-opposing party advised, lauded, cautioned, mildly discouraged, and in a most human revulsion of feeling showed their unprejudiced frankness by openly condemning on frequent occasions. The head of the nation having appointed an official from among his immediate supporters, there arose a clamor of adverse criticism upon a course which lowered the gifts of his sacred office to the grade of mere payment for value received. Having made a choice from without the circle, he called down upon himself frantic accusations of ingratitude to those to whom he owed all. There lay before him the agreeable alternatives of being a renegade or a monument of bribery and corruption, and if occasionally these alternatives lost for a moment their attractiveness, and the head of the nation gave way to a sense of perplexity, and was guilty of forming in secret a vague wish that the head of the nation was on some other individual's shoulders, or even went to the length ofwishing that the head upon his own shoulders was his own property, and not a football for the vivacious strength of the nation to expend itself upon,—if this occurred, though it is by no means likely, it certainly revealed a weakness of character and inadequacy to the situation which the nation could not have failed to condemn. The very reasonable prophecy,—made by the party whose candidate had not been elected,—that the government must inevitably go to destruction and the country to perdition, had, through some singular oversight on the part of the powers threatened, not been fulfilled. After waiting in breathless suspense for the occurrence of these catastrophes, and finding that they had apparently been postponed until the next election, the government had drawn a sigh of relief, and the country had gained courage to bestir itself cheerfully, with a view to such perquisites as might be obtained by active effort and a strong sense of general personal worthiness and fitness for any position.
There had descended upon the newly elected ruler an avalanche of seekers for office, a respectable number of whom laid in his hands the future salvation of their souls and bodies, and generously left to him the result. He found himself suddenly established as the guardian of the widow, the orphan, and the friendless, and required to repair fortunes or provide them, as the case might be, at a moment's notice; his sympathies were appealed to, his interests, his generosity, as an altogether omnipotent power in whose hands all things lay, and whose word was naturally law upon all occasions, great or small; and any failure on his part to respond to the entirely reasonable requests preferred was very properly laid to a tendency to abandoned scheming or to the heartless indifference of the great, which decision disposed of all difficulties in the argument, apart from such trivial ones as were left to the portion of the delinquent and were not referred to. Being called upon in his selection of his cabinet to display the judgment of Solomon, the diplomacy ofTalleyrand, and the daring of Napoleon, and above all to combine like powers in each official chosen, he might have faltered but for the assistance proffered him from all sides. This, and the fact that there was no lack of the qualifications required, supported him. Each day some monument of said qualifications, and others too numerous to mention, was presented to his notice. To propitiate the South it was suggested that he should appoint A——; to secure the North, B——; to control the East, C——; to sweep the West, D——; and to unite the country, E——. Circumstances having finally led him to decide upon G——, the government appeared to be in jeopardy again; but—possibly through having made use of its numerous opportunities of indulging in acrobatic efforts in the direction of losing its balance and regaining it again in an almost incredible manner—it recovered from the shock, and even retained its equilibrium, upon finding itself in the end saddled with a cabinet whose selection was universally acknowledged to be a failure when it was not denounced as a crime.
On this particular New Year's day there were few traces on the social surface of the disasters which so short a time before had threatened to engulf all. Washington wore an aspect even gayer than usual. The presidential reception began the day in its most imposing manner. Lines of carriages thronged the drive before the White House, and the diplomatists, statesmen, officials, and glittering beings in naval and military uniform, who descended from them, were possibly cheered and encouraged by the comments of the lookers-on, who knew them and their glories and their shortcomings by heart. The comments were not specially loud, however. That which in an English crowd takes the form of amiable or unamiable clamor, in an American gathering of a like order resolves itself into a serene readiness of remark, which exalts or disposes of a dignity with equal impartiality, and an ingenuous fearlessness of any consequence whatever, which would seem to argue that allmen are born free and some equal, though the last depends entirely upon circumstances. Each vehicle, having drawn up, deposited upon the stone steps of the broad portico a more or less picturesque or interesting personage. Now it was the starred and ribboned representative of some European court; again, a calm-visaged Japanese or Chinese official, in all the splendor of flowing robes and brilliant color; and, again, a man in citizen's clothes, whose unimposing figure represented such political eminence as to create more stir among the lookers-on than all the rest. Among equipages, there drove up at length a rather elegant littlecoupé, from which, when its door was opened, there sprang lightly to the stone steps the graceful figure of a young man, followed by an elder one. The young fellow, who was talking with much animation, turned an exhilaratingly bright face upon the crowd about him.
"On the whole, I rather like it," he said.
"Oh!" responded his companion, "as to that, you like everything. I never saw such a fellow."
The younger man laughed quite joyously.
"There is a great deal of truth in that," he said, "and I don't suppose you will deny that it is an advantage."
"An advantage!" repeated the other. "By Jupiter, I should think it was an advantage! Now, how long do you think this fellow will keep us waiting when we want him?"
"Oh!" was the answer; "he is Mrs. Amory's coachman, you know, and there isn't a doubt that he has had excellent training. She isn't fond of waiting."
"No," said the other, with a peculiar smile. "I should fancy she wasn't. Well, I guess we'll go in."
They turned to do so, and found themselves near a tall man in uniform, who almost immediately turned also, and revealed the soldierly visage of Colonel Tredennis.
He made a quick movement forward, which seemed to express some surprise.
"What, Amory!" he exclaimed. "You here, too? I was not at all sure that you had returned."
"I am scarcely sure myself yet," answered Richard, as he shook hands. "It only happened last night; but Bertha has been home a week. Is it possible you haven't seen her?"
"I have not seen anybody lately," said Tredennis, "and I did not know that she had returned until I read her name in the list of those who would receive."
"Oh, of course she will receive," said Richard. "And Planefield and I—you have met Senator Planefield?"
"How do you do?" said Senator Planefield, without any special manifestation of delight.
Tredennis bowed, and Richard went on airily, as they made their way in:
"Planefield and I have been sent out to do duty, and our list extends from Capitol Hill to Georgetown Heights."
"And he," said Senator Planefield, "professes to enjoy the prospect."
"Why not?" said Richard. "It is a bright, bracing day, and there is something exhilarating in driving from house to house, to find one's self greeted at each by a roomful of charming women,—most of them pretty, some of them brilliant, all of them well dressed and in holiday spirits. It is delightful."
"Doyoufind it delightful?" inquired Planefield, turning with some abruptness to Tredennis.
"I am obliged to own that I don't shine in society," answered Tredennis.
He knew there was nothing to resent in the question, but he was conscious of resenting something in the man himself. His big, prosperous-looking body and darkly florid face, with its heavy, handsome outlines, and keen, bold eyes, had impressed him unpleasantly from the first, and on each occasion of their meeting the impression seemed to deepen.
"Well, Amory shines," was his response, "and so does Mrs. Amory. We are to drop in and see her shine, as often as we happen to be in the neighborhood through the day."
They had reached the threshold of the reception-room by this time, and Richard, catching the last words, turned and spoke.
"Of course you will be there yourself in the course of the day," he said. "We shall possibly meet you—and, by-the-by, you will see Mrs. Sylvestre. She arrived two days ago."
When they came out again Richard was in more buoyant spirits than before. The lighted rooms, the brilliant dresses, the many faces he knew or did not know, the very crush itself, had acted upon him like a fine wind. He issued forth into the light of day again, girded and eager for his day's work.
"There is nothing like Washington," he announced, "and especially nothing like Washington at the beginning of the season. Just at the outset, when one is meeting people for the first time since their return, they actually have the air of being glad to see one, and a man has a delightful evanescent sense of being somehow positively popular."
"Does it makeyoufeel popular?" demanded Planefield of Tredennis, in his unceremonious fashion.
Tredennis presented to him an entirely immovable front.
"How doyoufind it?" he inquired.
The man laughed.
"Not as Amory does," he answered.
When thecoupéappeared and he took his place at Richard's side, he bent forward to bestow on Tredennis, as they drove away, a glance expressive of but little favor.
"I don't like that fellow," he said. "Confound him!"
Richard settled himself in his corner of the carriage,folding his fur-trimmed coat about him quite luxuriously.
"Oh, no. Not confound him," he replied. "He is a delightful fellow—in his way."
"Confound his way, then," responded Planefield. "There's too much of it."
Richard leaned slightly forward to look at the tall, motionless figure himself, and the faintest possible change passed over his face as he did so.
"He is not exactly a malleable sort of fellow," he remarked, "and I suppose there might arise occasions when he would be a little in the way; but there is no denying that he is picturesque."
"Oh!" exclaimed his companion, with more fervor than grace. "The devil take his picturesqueness!"
In the meantime Colonel Tredennis awaited the arrival of his own carriage, which had fallen back in the line. The surging of the crowd about him, the shouts of the policemen as they called up the vehicles, the rolling of vehicles and opening and shutting of doors, united themselves in an uproar which seemed to afford him a kind of seclusion. The subject of his thoughts as he stood in the midst of the throng was not a new one; it was one from whose presence he had ceased to expect to free himself; but as the information in the morning paper had accelerated the pulse of emotion in him, so his brief interview with Richard Amory had quickened it again. Since the day when he had left her in Virginia, five months before, he had not seen Bertha at all, and had only heard from her directly once. She had been at Long Branch, Saratoga, Newport, and afterward visiting friends in the northern cities. After his return from the West, Richard had frequently been with her, and their letters to the professor had informed him that they were well and were involved in a round of gayeties.
How the time had passed for Tredennis he could not himself have told. When he had returned toWashington he had lived and moved as a man in a dream. The familiar streets and buildings wore an unfamiliar look. It was a relief to find the places more deserted than before; his chief desire was to be, if possible, entirely alone. In the first vivid freshness of his impressions it seemed incredible that the days he had been living through had come to an end, and that absolutely nothing remained but the strange memory of them. At times it appeared that something must happen,—some impossible thing which would give reality to the past and motive to the future. If in any of his nightly walks before the closed and silent house he had suddenly seen that the shutters were opened and lights were shining within; if Bertha herself had, without warning, stood at the window and smiled upon him, he would have felt it at first only natural, even though he knew she was hundreds of miles away.
This for a few weeks, and then his exaltation died a gradual death for want of sustenance, and there remained only the long, sultry days to be lived through and their work to be done. They were lived through, and their work was not neglected; but there was no one of them which dragged its slow length by without leaving marks upon him which neither time nor change could erase in any future that might come.
"Five months," he said, as he waited with the clamor about him, "is longer than it seems—it is longer."
And Miss Jessup, passing him at the moment and looking up, found herself so utterly at a loss for an adjective adequate to the description of his expression, that her own bright and alert little countenance fell, and existence temporarily palled upon her.
It was late in the day when he reached the Amorys. When he drove up several carriages stood before the door, one of them Bertha's own, from which Richard and Planefield had just descended. Two or three men were going into the house, and one or two were leaving it. Through the open door were to be seen the lighted hall,and glimpses of bright rooms beyond, from which came the sound of voices, laughter, and the clink of glass.
Richard entered the house with Tredennis, and flung off his rather sumptuous outer garment with a laugh of relief.
"We have made fifty calls so far," he said, "and have enjoyed them enormously. What have you accomplished?"
"Not fifty, by any means," Tredennis answered, and then the man-servant took his coat, and they went into the parlors.
They seemed to be full of men,—young men, middle-aged men, old men; even a half-grown boy or two had timorously presented themselves, with large hopes of finding dazzling entertainment in the convivialities of the day. The shutters were closed and the rooms brilliantly alight; there were flowers in every available corner, and three or four charmingly dressed women, each forming a bright central figure in a group of black coats, gave themselves to their task of entertainment with delightful animation.
For a moment Tredennis stood still. He did not see Bertha at once, though he fancied he heard her voice in the room adjoining, where, through the half-drawnportières, were to be seen men standing, with coffee-cups, wine-glasses, or little plates in their hands, about a table bright with flowers, fruits, and all the usual glittering appurtenances. The next instant, amid a fresh burst of laughter, which she seemed to leave behind her, she appeared upon the threshold.
As she paused a second between the heavy curtains Tredennis thought suddenly of a brilliant tropical bird he had once seen somewhere, and the fancy had scarcely formed itself in his mind before she recognized him and came forward.
He had never seen her so brilliantly dressed before. The wonderful combination of rich and soft reds in her costume, the flash of the little jewelled bands claspedclose about her bare throat and arms, their pendants trembling and glowing in the light, the color on her cheeks, the look in her eyes, had a curiously bewildering effect upon him. When she gave him her hand he scarcely knew what to do with it, and could only wait for her to speak. And she spoke as if they had parted only an hour ago.
"At last," she said. "And it was very nice in you to leave me until the last, because now I know you will not feel obliged to go away so soon." And she withdrew her hand and opened her fan, and stood smiling up at him over its plumy border. "You see," she said, "that we have returned to our native atmosphere and may begin to breathe freely. Now we are real creatures again."
"Are we?" he answered. "Is that it?" and he glanced over the crowd, and then came back to her and looked her over from the glittering buckle on her slipper to the scintillating arrow in her hair. "I suppose we have," he added. "I begin to realize it."
"If you need anything to assist you to realize it," she said, "cast your eye upon Mr. Arbuthnot, and I think you will find him sufficient; for me, everything crystallized itself and all my doubts disappeared the moment I saw his opera hat, and heard his first remark about the weather. It is a very fine day," she added, with a serene air of originality, "a little cold, but fine and clear. Delightful weather for those of you who are making calls. It has often struck me that it must be unpleasant to undertake so much when the weather is against you. It is colder to-day than it was yesterday, but it will be likely to be warmer to-morrow. It is to be hoped that we shall have an agreeable winter."
"You might," he said, looking at her over the top of her fan, "induce them to mention it in the churches."
"That," she answered, "is the inspiration of true genius, and it shall be attended to at once, or—here isSenator Planefield; perhaps he might accomplish something by means of a bill?"
The senator joined them in his usual manner, which was not always an engaging manner, and was at times a little suggestive of a disposition to appropriate the community, and was also a somewhat loud-voiced manner, and florid in its decorative style. It was, on the whole, less engaging than usual upon the present occasion. The fact that he was for some reason not entirely at ease expressed itself in his appearing to be very wonderfully at ease; indeed, metaphorically speaking, he appeared to have his hands in his pockets.
"A bill!" he said. "You have the floor, and I stand ready to second any motion you choose to make. I think we might put it through together. What can we do for you?"
"We want an appropriation," Bertha answered,—"an appropriation of fine weather, which will enable Colonel Tredennis to be as giddy a butterfly of fashion as his natural inclination would lead him to desire to be."
Planefield glanced at Tredennis with a suggestion of grudging the momentary attention.
"Ishea butterfly of fashion?" he asked.
"What!" exclaimed Bertha,—"is it possible that you have not detected it? It is the fatal flaw upon his almost perfect character. Can it be that you have been taking him seriously, and mistakenly imagining that it was Mr. Arbuthnot who was frivolous?"
"Arbuthnot," repeated the senator. "Which is Arbuthnot? How is a man to tell one from the other? There are too many of them!"
"What an agreeable way of saying that Colonel Tredennis is a host in himself!" said Bertha. "But I have certainly not found that there were too many of him, and I assure you that you would know Mr. Arbuthnot from the other after you had exchanged remarks with him. He has just been beguiled into the next room by Mrs. Sylvestre, who is going to give him some coffee."
"Mrs. Sylvestre," said Tredennis. "Richard told me she was with you, and I was wondering why I did not see her."
"You did not see her," said Bertha, "because I wished her to dawn upon you slowly, and, having that end in view, I arranged that Mr. Arbuthnot should occupy her attention when I saw you enter."
"He couldn't stand it all at once, could he?" remarked Planefield, whose manner of givingherhis attention was certainly not grudging. He kept his eyes fixed on her face, and apparently found entertainment in her most trivial speech.
"It was not that, exactly," she answered. Then she spoke to Tredennis.
"She is ten times as beautiful as she was," she said, "and it would not be possible to calculate how many times more charming."
"That was not necessary," responded Tredennis.
He could not remove his own eyes from her face, even while he was resenting the fact that Planefield looked at her; he himself watched her every movement and change of expression.
"It was entirely unnecessary," she returned; "but it is the truth."
"You are trying to prejudice him against her," said Planefield.
"She is my ideal of all that a beautiful woman ought to be," she replied, "and I should like to form myself upon her."
"Oh, we don't want any of that," put in Planefield. "You are good enough for us."
She turned her attention to him. Her eyes met his with the most ingenuous candor, and yet the little smile in them was too steady not to carry suggestion with it.
"Quite?" she said.
"Yes, quite," he answered, not so entirely at ease as before.
Her little smile did not waver in the least.
"Do you know," she said, "it seems almost incredible, but I will try to believe it. Now," she said to Tredennis, "if Senator Planefield will excuse me for a moment, I will take you into the other room. You shall speak to Mrs. Sylvestre. He has already seen her. Will you come?"
"I shall be very glad," he answered. He followed as she led him to the adjoining room. On its threshold she paused an instant.
"Exactly as I expected," she said. "She is listening to Mr. Arbuthnot."
Mr. Arbuthnot was standing at the end of the low mantel. He held a cup of coffee in his hand, but had apparently forgotten it in giving his attention to his very charming companion. This companion was, of course, Mrs. Sylvestre herself. Tredennis recognized her clear, faintly tinted face and light, willowy figure at once. She wore a dress of black lace, with purple passion-flowers, and she was looking at Arbuthnot with reflective eyes, almost the color of the flowers. She did not seem to be talking herself, but she was listening beautifully, with a graceful, receptive attention. Arbuthnot evidently felt it, and was improving his shining hour with a sense of enjoyment tempered by no lack of ability to avail himself of its fleeting pleasure.
It is possible, however, that his rapture at seeing Tredennis may have been tempered by the natural weakness of man, but he bore himself with his usual unperturbed equanimity.
"There," he remarked to Mrs. Sylvestre, "is the most objectionable creature in Washington."
"Objectionable!" Mrs. Sylvestre repeated. "Bertha is bringing him here."
"Yes," responded Arbuthnot, "that is the objection to him, and it leaves him without a redeeming quality."
Mrs. Sylvestre gave him a charmingly interested glance, and the next instant made a slight movement forward.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, "it is Colonel Tredennis!" and she held out her hand with the most graceful gesture of welcome imaginable.
"It is very good of you to remember me," Tredennis said.
"It was not difficult," she answered, with a smile. And they fell, in the most natural manner, a step apart from the others, and she stood and looked at him as he spoke just as she had looked at Arbuthnot a moment before. Arbuthnot began to give mild attention to his coffee.
"It is quite cold," he said to Bertha. "Will you give me another cup?"
"Yes," she answered, and took it from his hand to carry it to the table. He followed her, and stood at her side as she poured the fresh cup out.
"It is my impression," he said, with serene illiberality, "that she did not remember him at all."
"Yes, she did," Bertha replied. "She remembers everybody. That is one of her gifts. She has a great many gifts."
"I did not place implicit confidence in her intimation that she remembered me," he proceeded, still serenely. "I liked the statement, and saw the good taste of it, and the excellent reasons for its being true; but I managed to restrain the naïve impulses of a trusting nature. And it doesn't strike me as being so entirely plausible that she should have remembered Tredennis."
He paused suddenly and looked at Bertha's hand, in which she held the sugar-tongs and a lump of sugar.
"Will you have one lump, or two?" she asked.
Then he looked from her hand to her face. Her hand was trembling and her face was entirely without color. The look of strained steadiness in her uplifted eyes was a shock to him. It seemed to him that any one who chanced to glance at her must see it.
"You have been standing too long," he said. "You have tired yourself out again."
He took the cup of coffee from her.
"It is too late for you to expect many calls now," he said, "and if any one comes you can easily be found in the conservatory. I am going to take you there, and let you sit down for a few seconds, at least."
He gave her his arm and carried the cup of coffee with him.
"You will have to drink this yourself," he said. "Have you eaten anything to-day?"
"No," she replied.
"I thought not. And then you are surprised to find your hand trembling. Don't you see what nonsense it is?"
"Yes."
He stepped with her into the tiny conservatory at the end of the room, and gave her a seat behind a substantial palm on a red stand. His eyes never left her face, though he went on talking in the most matter-of-fact tone.
"Drink that coffee," he said, "and then I will bring you a glass of wine and a sandwich."
She put out her hand as if to take the cup, but it fell, shaking, upon her lap.
"I can't," she said.
"You must," he replied.
The inflexibility of his manner affected her, as he had known it would. When he sat down in the low seat at her side, and held out the cup, she took it.
"Go and get the wine," she said, without looking at him.
He went at once, neither speaking nor glancing back at her. He was glad of the opportunity of turning his face away from her, since he felt that, in spite of his determination, it was losing something of its expressionless calm.
When he entered the room Mrs. Sylvestre still stood where he had left her. It was she who was speaking now, and Tredennis, who was listening, looking down upon her with an expression of much interest.
When he had procured a glass of wine and a sandwich Arbuthnot went to her.
"I have secreted Mrs. Amory in the conservatory," he said, "with a view of inducing her to take something in the form of sustenance. I can produce her at a moment's notice if she is needed."
"That was consideration," she replied.
"It was humanity," he answered, and went away.
Bertha had finished the coffee when he returned to her. The blanched look had left her, and her voice, when she spoke, sounded more natural and steady.
"It did me good," she said, and this time she looked at him, and there was something in her uplifted eyes which touched him.
"I knew it would," he answered.
"You always know," she said. "There is no one who knows so well what is good for me"; and she said it with great gentleness.
He took refuge from himself, as he sometimes found it discreet to do, in his usual airy lightness.
"I am all soul myself," he remarked, "as you may have observed, and I understand the temptation to scorn earthly food and endeavor to subsist wholly upon the plaudits of the multitude. You will, perhaps, permit me to remark that though the new gown"—with an approving glance at it—"is an immense and unqualified success, I doubt its power to sustain nature during the six or eight hours of a New Year's reception."
Bertha glanced down at it herself.
"Do you think it is pretty?" she asked.
"I shouldn't call it pretty," he replied. "I should call it something more impressive."
She still looked at it.
"It is a flaring thing," she said.
"No, it isn't," he returned, promptly. "Not in the least. You might call it brilliant—if you insist on an adjective. It is a brilliant thing, and it is not like you in the least."
She turned toward him.
"No," she said, "it isn't like me in the least."
"It looks," remarked Arbuthnot, giving it some lightly critical attention, "as if you had taken a new departure."
"That is it exactly," she returned. "You always say the right thing. I have taken a new departure."
"Might I ask in what direction?" he inquired.
"Yes," she responded. "I will tell you, as a fair warning. I am going to be a dazzling and worldly creature."
"You are?" he said. "Now that is entirely sensible, though I should scarcely call it a new departure. You know you tried it last winter, with the most satisfying results. When Lent came on you had lost several pounds in weight and all your color; you had refined existence until neither rest nor food appeared necessary to you, and the future was naturally full of promise. Be gay, by all means; you'll find it pay, I assure you. Go to a lunch-party at one, and a reception at four, a dinner in the evening, and drop in at a German or so on your way home, taking precautions at the same time against neglecting your calling-list in the intervals these slight recreations allow you. Oh, I should certainly advise you to be gay."
"Laurence," she said, "do you think if one should do thateveryday,everyday, and give one's selfnorest, that after a while it wouldkillone?"
He regarded her fixedly for an instant.
"Do you want to die?" he asked, at last.
She sat perfectly still, and something terribly like, and yet terribly unlike, a smile crept slowly into her eyes as they met his. Then she replied, without flinching in the least, or moving her gaze:
"No."
He held up a long, slender forefinger, and shook it at her, slowly, in his favorite gesture of warning.
"No," he said, "you don't; but, even if you fanciedyou did, don't flatter yourself that it would happen. Shall I tell you what would occur? You would simply break down. You would lose your self-control and do things you did not wish to do; you would find it a physical impossibility to be equal to the occasion, and you would end by being pale and haggard—haggard, and discovering that your gowns were not becoming to you. How does the thing strike you?"
"It is very brutal," she said, with a little shudder; "but it is true."
"When you make ten remarks that are true," he returned, "nine of them are brutal. That is the charm of life."
"I don't think," she said, with inconsequent resentment, "that you very much mind being brutal to me."
"A few minutes ago you said I knew what was good for you," he responded.
"You do," she said, "that is it, and it is only like me that I should hate you because you do. You must think," with a pathetic tone of appeal for herself in her voice, "that I do not mind being brutal to you; but I don't want to be. I don't want to do any of the things I am doing now."
She picked up the bouquet of Jacqueminot roses she had been carrying and had laid down near her.
"Don't talk about me," she said. "Let us talk about something else,—these, for instance. Do you know where they came from?"
"I could scarcely guess."
"Senator Planefield sent them to me."
He regarded them in silence.
"They match the dress," she said, "and they belong to it."
"Yes," he answered, "they match the dress."
Then he was silent again.
"Well," she said, restlessly, "why don't you say something to me?"
"There isn't anything to say," he replied.
"You are thinking that I am very bad?" she said.
"You are trying to persuade yourself that you are very bad, and are finding a fictitious excitement in it; but it is all a mistake. It won't prove the consolation you expect it to," he answered. "Suppose you give it up before it gives rise to complications."
"We are talking of Bertha Amory again," she said. "Let us talk about Agnes Sylvestre. Don't you find her very beautiful?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Why don't you say more than 'yes'?" she asked. "You mean more."
"I couldn't mean more," he answered. "I should think it was enough to mean that much; there are even circumstances under which it might be too much."
"She is lovelier than she used to be," said Bertha, reflectively; "and more fascinating."
"Yes to that also," he responded.
"Any one might love her," she went on, in the same tone. "Anyone."
"I should think so," he replied, quietly.
"I do not see how it would be possible," she added, "for any one—who was thrown with her—to resist her—unless it was some one like you."
She turned a faint smile upon him.
"I am glad," she said, "thatyouare not susceptible."
"So am I," he said, with some dryness.
"If you were susceptible you would go too," she ended. "And I don't wanteveryone to leave me."
"Every one?" he repeated.
She rose as if to go, giving a light touch to the folds of her dress, and still smiling a little.
"Colonel Tredennis has fallen a victim," she said, "in the most natural and proper manner. I knew he would, and he has distinguished himself by at once carrying out my plans for him. Now we must go back to the parlors. I have rested long enough."
They returned just in time to meet a fresh party ofcallers, and Arbuthnot was of necessity thrown for the time being upon his own resources. These did not fail him. He found entertainment in his surroundings until a certain opportunity he had rather desired presented itself to him. He observed that Mrs. Sylvestre was once more near him, and that the men occupying her attention were on the point of taking their leave. By the time they had done so he had dexterously brought to a close his conversation with his male companion, and had unobtrusively forwarded himself, in an entirely incidental manner, as an aspirant for her notice.
She received him with a quiet suggestion of pleasure in her smile.
"Have you enjoyed the day?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied. "I am almost sorry that it is so nearly over. It has been very agreeable."
Then he found her eyes resting upon him in the quiet and rather incomprehensible way which Bertha had counted among her chiefest charms.
"Have you enjoyed it?" she inquired.
"If I had not," he said, "I should feel rather like a defeated candidate. One may always enjoy things if one applies one's self."
She seemed to reflect upon him an instant again.
"You see a great deal of Bertha?" she said.
"Yes, a great deal. Would you mind telling me why you ask?"
"Because that remark was so entirely like her," she replied.
"Well," he returned, "there is no denying that I have formed myself upon her, and though the fact reveals me in all my shallow imitative weakness, I can offer the apology that the means justifies the end. Upon the whole, I am glad to be detected, as it points to a measure of success in the attempt."
"But," she went on, "she tells me that she has formed herself upon you."
"Ah!" he said; "she meant you to repeat it to me, her design being to betray me into a display of intoxicated vanity."
"She is very fond of you," she remarked.
"I am very fond of her," he answered, quickly—and then relapsing into his usual manner—"though that is not a qualification sufficiently rare to distinguish me."
"No," she said, "it is not."
Then she gave Bertha one of the glances.
"It was very thoughtful in you to take her into the conservatory," she said. "I was startled to see how pale she looked as you left the room."
"She is not strong," he said, "and she insists on ignoring the fact."
"Do you know," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "that was what struck me when we met for the first time in the autumn—that she was not strong. She used to be strong."
"If she would accept the fact she would get over it," he said; "but she won't."
"I met her first at Newport," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "just after Janey's illness. For a day or so I felt that I did not know her at all; but in course of time I got over the feeling; or she changed—I scarcely know which. I suppose the strain during the little girl's illness had been very severe?"
"There is no doubt of that," said Arbuthnot; "and her anxiety had been much exaggerated."
"I shall see a great deal of her this winter," she returned, "and perhaps I may persuade her to take care of herself."
He spoke with a touch of eager seriousness in his manner.
"I wish you would," he said. "It is what she needs, that some woman should call her attention to the mistake she is making."
"I will try to do it," she responded, gently. "I am fond of her too."
"And you intend remaining in Washington?" he asked.
"Yes. I have had no plans for three years. When first it dawned on me that it would interest me to make plans again, I thought of Washington. I have found a house in Lafayette Square, and I think I shall be established in it, with the assistance of my aunt, who is to live with me, in about three weeks."
"That sounds very agreeable," he remarked.
"I shall hope to make it sufficiently so," she said. "Will you come sometimes to see if my efforts are successful?"
"If you knew how unworthy I am," he responded, "even my abject gratitude for your kindness would not repay you for it."
"Are you so very unworthy?" she was beginning, when her eyes appeared to be caught by some object at the other side of the room.
It was not a particularly interesting object. It was merely the figure of an unprepossessing boy, whose provincial homeliness was rendered doubly impressive by his frightful embarrassment. He had arrived a few moments before, with two more finished youths, whose mother Bertha knew, and, having been basely deserted by them at the outset, had stranded upon the treacherous shores of inexperience as soon as he had shaken hands.
Mrs. Sylvestre's beautiful eyes dwelt upon him a moment with sympathy and interest.
"Will you excuse me," she said to Arbuthnot, "if I go and talk to that boy? Bertha is too busy to attend to him, and he seems to know no one."