Mrs. Amory did not receive on New Year's day. The season had well set in before she arrived in Washington. One morning in January Mrs. Sylvestre, sitting alone, reading, caught sight of the littlecoupéas it drew up before the carriage-step, and, laying aside her book, reached the parlor door in time to meet Bertha as she entered it. She took both her hands and drew her toward the fire, still holding them.
"Why did I not know you had returned?" she said. "When did you arrive?"
"Last night," Bertha answered. "You see I come to you early."
It was a cold day and she was muffled in velvet and furs. She sat down, loosened her wrap and let it slip backward, and as its sumptuous fulness left her figure it revealed it slender to fragility, and showed that the outline of her cheek had lost all its roundness. She smiled faintly, meeting Agnes' anxious eyes.
"Don't look at me," she said. "I am not pretty. I have been ill. You heard I was not well in Newport? It was a sort of low fever, and I am not entirely well yet. Malaria, you know, is always troublesome. But you are very well?"
"Yes, I am well," Agnes replied.
"And you begin to like Washington again?"
"I began last winter."
"How did you enjoy the spring? You were here until the end of June."
"It was lovely."
"And now you are here once more, and how pretty everything about you is!" Bertha said, glancing around the room. "And you are ready to be happy all winteruntil June again. Do you know, you look happy. Not excitably happy, but gently, calmly happy, as if the present were enough for you."
"It is," said Agnes, "I don't think I want any future."
"It would be as well to abolish it if one could," Bertha answered; "but it comes—it comes!"
She sat and looked at the fire a few seconds under the soft shadow of her lashes, and then spoke again.
"As for me," she said, "I am going to give dinner-parties to Senator Planefield's friends."
"Bertha!" exclaimed Agnes.
"Yes," said Bertha, nodding gently. "It appears somehow that Richard belongs to Senator Planefield, and, as I belong to Richard, why, you see"—
She ended with a dramatic little gesture, and looked at Agnes once more.
"It took me some time to understand it," she said. "I am not quite sure that I understand it quite thoroughly even now. It is a little puzzling, or, perhaps, I am dull of comprehension. At all events, Richard has talked to me a great deal. It is plainly my duty to be agreeable and hospitable to the people he wishes to please and bring in contact with each other."
"And those people?" asked Agnes.
"They are political men: they are members of committees, members of the House, members of the Senate; and their only claim to existence in our eyes is that they are either in favor of or opposed to a certain bill not indirectly connected with the welfare of the owners of Westoria lands."
"Bertha," said Agnes, quickly, "you are not yourself."
"Thank you," was the response, "that is always satisfactory, but the compliment would be more definite if you told me who I happened to be. But I can tell you that I am that glittering being, the female lobbyist. I used to wonder last winter if I was not on the verge of it; but now I know. I wonder if they all begin as innocently as I did, and find the descent—isn't it adescent?—as easy and natural. I feel queer, but not exactly disreputable. It is merely a matter of being a dutiful wife and smiling upon one set of men instead of another. Still, I am slightly uncertain as to just how disreputable I am. I was beginning to be quite reconciled to my atmosphere until I saw Colonel Tredennis, and I confess he unsettled my mind and embarrassed me a little in my decision."
"You have seen him already?"
"Accidentally, yes. He did not know I had returned, and came to see Richard. He is quite intimate with Richard now. He entered the parlor and found me there. I do not think he was glad to see me. I left him very soon."
She drew off her glove, and smoothed it out upon her knee, with a thin and fragile little hand upon which the rings hung loosely. Agnes bent forward and involuntarily laid her own hand upon it.
"Dear," she said.
Bertha hurriedly lifted her eyes.
"What I wish to say," she said, "was that the week after next we give a little dinner to Senator Blundel, and I wanted to be sure I might count on you. If you are there—and Colonel Tredennis—you will give it an unprofessional aspect, which is what we want. But perhaps you will refuse to come?"
"Bertha," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "I will be with you at any time—at all times—you wish for or need me."
"Yes," said Bertha, reflecting upon her a moment, "I think you would."
She got up and kissed her lightly and without effusion, and then Agnes rose, too, and they stood together.
"You were always good," Bertha said. "I think life has made you better instead of worse. It is not so always. Things are so different—everything seems to depend upon circumstances. What is good in me would be far enough from your standards to be called wickedness."
She paused abruptly, and Agnes felt that she did soto place a check upon herself; she had seen her do it before. When she spoke again it was in an entirely different tone, and the remaining half-hour of her visit was spent in the discussion of every-day subjects. Agnes listened, and replied to her with a sense of actual anguish. She could have borne better to have seen her less self-controlled; or she fancied so, at least. The summer had made an alteration in her, which it was almost impossible to describe. Every moment revealed some new, sad change in her, and yet she sat and talked commonplaces, and was bright, and witty, and epigrammatic until the last.
"When we get our bill through," she said, with a little smile, just before her departure, "I am to go abroad for a year,—for two, for three, if I wish. I think that is the bribe which has been offered me. One must always be bribed, you know."
As she stood at the window watching the carriage drive away, Agnes was conscious of a depression which was very hard to bear. The brightness of her own atmosphere seemed to have become heavy,—the sun hid itself behind the drifting, wintry clouds,—she glanced around her room with a sense of dreariness. Something carried her back to the memories which were the one burden of her present life.
"Such grief cannot enter a room and not leave its shadow behind it," she said. And she put her hand against the window-side, and leaned her brow upon it sadly. It was curious, she thought, the moment after, that the mere sight of a familiar figure should bring such a sense of comfort with it as did the sight of the one she saw approaching. It was that of Laurence Arbuthnot, who came with a business communication for Mrs. Merriam, having been enabled, by chance, to leave his work for an hour. He held a roll of music in one hand and a bunch of violets in the other, and when he entered the room was accompanied by the fresh fragrance of the latter offering.
Agnes made a swift involuntary movement toward him.
"Ah!" she said, "I could scarcely believe that it was you."
He detected the emotion in her manner and tone at once.
"Something has disturbed you," he said. "What is it?"
"I have seen Bertha," she answered, and the words had a sound of appeal in them, which she herself no more realized or understood than she comprehended the impulse which impelled her to speak.
"She has been here! She looks so ill—so worn. Everything is so sad! I"—
She stopped and stood looking at him.
"Must I go away?" he said, quietly. "Perhaps you would prefer to be alone. I understand what you mean, I think."
"Oh, no!" she said, impulsively, putting out her hand. "Don't go. I am unhappy. It was—it was a relief to see you."
And when she sank on the sofa, he took a seat near her and laid the violets on her lap, and there was a faint flush on his face.
The little dinner, which was the first occasion of Senator Blundel's introduction to the Amory establishment, was a decided success.
"We will make it a success," Bertha had said. "Itmustbe one." And there was a ring in her voice which was a great relief to her husband.
"It will be one," he said. "There is no fear ofyourfailing when you begin in this way." And his spirits rose to such an extent that he became genial and fascinating once more, and almost forgot his late trials and uncertainties. He had always felt great confidence in Bertha.
On the afternoon of the eventful day Bertha did notgo out. She spent the hours between luncheon and the time for dressing with her children. Once, as he passed the open door of the nursery, Richard saw her sitting upon the carpet, building a house of cards, while Jack, and Janey, and Meg sat about her enchanted. A braid of her hair had become loosened and hung over her shoulder; her cheeks were flushed by the fire; she looked almost like a child herself, with her air of serious absorbed interest in the frail structure growing beneath her hands.
"Won't that tire you?" Richard asked.
She glanced up with a smile.
"No," she said, "it will rest me."
He heard her singing to them afterward, and later, when she went to her dressing-room, he heard the pretty lullaby die away gradually as she moved through the corridor.
When she appeared again she was dressed for dinner, and came in buttoning her glove, and at the sight of her he uttered an exclamation of pleasure.
"What a perfect dress!" he said. "What is the idea? There must be one."
She paused and turned slowly round so that he might obtain the full effect.
"You should detect it," she replied. "It is meant to convey one."
"It has a kind of dove-like look," he said.
She faced him again.
"That is it," she said, serenely. "In the true artist spirit, I have attired myself with a view to expressing the perfect candor and simplicity of my nature. Should you find it possible to fear or suspect me of ulterior motives—if you were a senator, for instance?"
"Ah, come now!" said Richard, not quite so easily, "that is nonsense! You have no ulterior motives."
She opened her plumy, dove-colored fan and came nearer him.
"There is nothing meretricious about me," she said.
"I am softly clad in dove color; a few clusters of pansies adorn me; I am covered from throat to wrists; I have not a jewel about me. Could the effect be better?"
"No, it could not," he replied, but suddenly he felt a trifle uncomfortable again, and wondered what was hidden behind the inscrutable little gaze she afterwards fixed upon the fire.
But when Blundel appeared, which he did rather early, he felt relieved again. Nothing could have been prettier than her greeting of him, or more perfect in its attainment of the object of setting him at his ease. It must be confessed that he was not entirely at his ease when he entered, his experience not having been of a nature to develop in him any latent love for general society. He had fought too hard a fight to leave him much time to know women well, and his superficial knowledge of them made him a trifle awkward, as it occasionally renders other men astonishingly bold. In a party of men all his gifts displayed themselves; in the presence of women he was afraid that less substantial fellows had the advantage of him,—men who could not tell half so good a story or make half so exhilarating a joke. As to this special dinner he had not been particularly anxious to count himself among the guests, and was not very certain as to how Planefield had beguiled him into accepting the invitation.
But ten minutes after he had entered the room he began to feel mollified. Outside the night was wet and unpleasant, and not calculated to improve a man's temper; the parlors glowing with fire-light and twinkling wax candles were a vivid and agreeable contrast to the sloppy rawness. The slender, dove-colored figure, with its soft, trailing draperies, assumed more definitely pleasant proportions, and in his vague, inexperienced, middle-aged fashion he felt the effect of it. She had a nice way, this little woman, he decided; no nonsense or airs and graces about her: an easy manner, a gay littlelaugh. He did not remember exactly afterward what it was she said which first wakened him up, but he found himself laughing and greatly amused, and when he made a witticism he felt he had reason to be proud of, the gay little peal of laughter which broke forth in response had the most amazingly exhilarating effect upon him, and set him upon his feet for the evening. Women seldom got all the flavor of his jokes. He had an idea that some of them were a little afraid of them and of him, too. The genuine mirth in Bertha's unstudied laughter was like wine to him, and was better than the guffaws of a dozen men, because it had a finer and a novel flavor. After the joke and the laugh the ice was melted, and he knew that he was in the humor to distinguish himself.
Planefield discovered this the moment he saw him, and glanced at Richard, who was brilliant with good spirits.
"She's begun well," he said, when he had an opportunity to speak to him. "I never saw him in a better humor. She's pleased him somehow. Women don't touch him usually."
"She will end better," said Richard. "He pleases her."
He did not displease her, at all events. She saw the force and humor of his stalwart jokes, and was impressed by the shrewd, business-like good-nature which betrayed nothing. When he began to enjoy himself she liked the genuineness of his enjoyment all the more because it was a personal matter with him, and he seemed to revel in it.
"He enjoyshimself," was her mental comment, "reallyhimself, not exactly the rest of us, except as we stimulate him, and make him say good things."
Among the chief of her gifts had always been counted the power of stimulating people, and making them say their best things, and she made the most of this power now. She listened with her brightest look, she uttered her little exclamations of pleasure and interest atexactly the right moment, and the gay ring of her spontaneous sounding laugh was perfection. Miss Varien, who was one of her guests, sat and regarded her with untempered admiration.
"Your wife," she said to Amory, in an undertone, "is simply incomparable. It is not necessary to tell you that, of course; but it strikes me with fresh force this evening. She really seems to enjoy things. That air of gay, candid delight is irresistible. It makes her seem to that man like a charming little girl—a harmless, bright, sympathetic little girl. How he likes her!"
When she went in to dinner with him, and he sat by her side, he liked her still more. He had never been in better spirits in his life; he had never said so many things worth remembering; he had never heard such sparkling and vivacious talk as went on round this particular table. It never paused or lagged. There was Amory, all alight and stirred by every conversational ripple which passed him; there was Miss Varien, scintillating and casting off showers of sparks in the prettiest and most careless fashion; there was Laurence Arbuthnot, doing his share without any apparent effort, and appreciating his neighbors to the full; there was Mrs. Sylvestre, her beautiful eyes making speech almost superfluous, and Mrs. Merriam, occasionally casting into the pool some neatly weighted pebble, which sent its circles to the shore; and in the midst of the coruscations Blundel found himself, somehow, doing quite his portion of the illumination. Really these people and their dinner-party pleased him wonderfully well, and he was far from sorry that he had come, and far from sure that he should not come again if he were asked. He was shrewd enough, too, to see how much the success of everything depended upon his own little companion at the head of the table, and, respecting success beyond all things, after the manner of his kind, he liked her all the better for it. There was somethingabout her which, as Miss Varien had said, made him feel that she was like a bright, sympathetic little girl, and engendered a feeling of fatherly patronage which was entirely comfortable. But, though she rather led others to talk than talked herself, he noticed that she said a sharp thing now and then; and he liked that, too, and was greatly amused by it. He liked women to be sharp, if they were not keen enough to interfere with masculine prerogatives. There was only one person in the company he did not find exhilarating, and that was a large, brown-faced fellow, who sat next to Mrs. Merriam, and said less than might have been expected of him, though, when he spoke, his remarks were well enough in their way. Blundel mentioned him afterward to Bertha when they returned to the parlor.
"That colonel, who is he?" he asked her. "I didn't catch his name exactly. Handsome fellow; but he'd be handsomer if"—
"It is the part of wisdom to stop you," said Bertha, "and tell you that he is a sort of cousin of mine, and his perfections are such as I regard with awe. His name is Colonel Tredennis, and you have read of him in the newspapers."
"What!" he exclaimed, turning his sharp little eyes upon Tredennis,—"the Indian man? I'm glad you told me that. I want to talk to him." And, an opportunity being given him, he proceeded to do so with much animation, ruffling his stiff hair up at intervals in his interest, his little eyes twinkling like those of some alert animal.
He left the house late and in the best of humors. He had forgotten for the time being all questions of bills and subsidies. Nothing had occurred to remind him of such subjects. Their very existence seemed a trifle problematical, or, rather, perhaps it seemed desirable that it should be so.
"I feel," he said to Planefield, as he was shrugging himself into his overcoat, "as if I had rather missed it by not coming here before."
"You were asked," answered Planefield.
"So I was," he replied, attacking the top button of the overcoat. "Well, the next time I am asked I suppose I shall come."
Then he gave his attention to the rest of the buttons.
"A man in public life ought to see all sides of his public," he said, having disposed of the last one. "Said some good things, didn't they? The little woman isn't without a mind of her own, either. When is it she receives?"
"Thursdays," said Planefield.
"Ah, Thursdays."
And they went out in company.
Her guests having all departed, Bertha remained for a few minutes in the parlor. Arbuthnot and Tredennis went out last, and as the door closed upon them she looked at Richard.
"Well?" she said.
"Well!" exclaimed Richard. "It could not have been better!"
"Couldn't it?" she said, looking down a little meditatively.
"No," he responded, with excellent good cheer, "and you see how simple it was, and—and how unnecessary it is to exaggerate it and call it by unpleasant names. What we want is merely to come in contact with these people, and show them how perfectly harmless we are, and that when the time comes they may favor us without injury to themselves or any one else. That's it in a nutshell."
"We always say 'us,' don't we?" said Bertha,—"as if we were part-proprietors of the Westoria lands ourselves. It is a little confusing, don't you think so?"
She paused and looked up with one of her sudden smiles.
"Still I don't feel exactly sure that I have been—but no, I am not to call it lobbying, am I? What must I call it? It really ought to have a name."
"Don't call it anything," said Richard, faintly conscious of his dubiousness again.
"Why, what a good idea!" she answered. "What a good way of getting round a difficulty—not to give it a name! It almost obliterates it, doesn't it? It is an actual inspiration. We won't call it anything. There is so much in a name—too much, on the whole, really. But—without giving it a name—I have behaved pretty well and advanced our—your—whose interests?"
"Everybody's," he replied, with an effort at lightness. "Mine particularly. I own that my view of the matter is a purely selfish one. There is a career before me, you know, if all goes well."
He detected at once the expression of gentleness which softened her eyes as she watched him.
"You always wanted a career, didn't you?" she said.
"It isn't pleasant," he said, "for a man to know that he is not a success."
"If I can give you your career," she said, "you shall have it, Richard. It is a simpler thing than I thought, after all." And she went upstairs to her room, stopping on the way to spend a few minutes in the nursery.
The professor sat in his favorite chair by his library fire, an open volume on his knee, and his after-dinner glass of wine, still unfinished, on the table near him. He had dined a couple of hours ago with Mr. Arbuthnot, who had entertained him very agreeably and had not long since left him to present himself upon some social scene.
It was of his departed guest that he was thinking as he pondered, and of certain plans he had on hand for his ultimate welfare, and his thoughts so deeply occupied him that he did not hear the sound of the door-bell, which rang as he sat, nor notice any other sound until the door of the room opened and some one entered. He raised his head and looked around then, uttering a slight ejaculation of surprise.
"Why, Bertha!" he said. "My dear! This is unexpected."
He paused and gave her one of his gently curious looks. She had thrown her cloak off as she came near him, and something in her appearance attracted his attention.
"My dear," he said, slowly, "you look to-night as you did years ago. I am reminded of the time when Philip first came to us. I wonder why?"
There was a low seat near his side, and she came and took it.
"It is the dress," she said. "I was looking over some things I had laid aside, and found it. I put it on for old acquaintance' sake. I have never worn it since then. Perhaps I hoped it would make me feel like a girl again."
Her tone was very quiet, her whole manner wasquiet; the dress was simplicity itself. A little lace kerchief was knotted about her throat.
"That is a very feminine idea," remarked the professor, seeming to give it careful attention. "Peculiarly feminine, I should say. And—does it, my dear?"
"Not quite," she answered. "A little. When I first put it on and stood before the glass I forgot a good many things for a few moments, and then, suddenly, I heard the children's voices in the nursery, and Richard came in, and Bertha Herrick was gone. You know I was Bertha Herrick when I wore this—Bertha Herrick, thinking of her first party."
"Yes, my dear," he responded, "I—I remember."
There were a few moments of silence, in which he looked abstractedly thoughtful, but presently he bestirred himself.
"By the by," he said, "that reminds me. Didn't I understand that there was a great party somewhere to-night? Mr. Arbuthnot left me to go to it, I think. I thought there was a reason for my surprise at seeing you. That was it. Surely you should have been at the great party instead of here."
"Well," she replied, "I suppose I should, but for some curious accident or other—I don't know what the accident is or how it happened—I should have had an invitation—of course if it had chanced to reach me; but something has occurred to prevent it doing so, I suppose. Such things happen, you know. To all intents and purposes I have not been invited, so I could not go. And I am very glad. I would rather be here."
"I would rather have you here," he returned, "if such seclusion pleases you. But I can hardly imagine, my dear, how the party"—
She put her hand on his caressingly.
"It cannot be an entire success," she said. "It won't, in my absence; but misfortunes befall even the magnificent and prosperous, and the party must console itself. I like to be here—I like very much to be here."
He glanced at her gray dress again.
"Bertha Herrick would have preferred the party," he remarked.
"Bertha Amory is wiser," she said. "We will be quiet together—and happy."
They were very quiet. The thought occurred to the professor several times during the evening. She kept her seat near him, and talked to him, speaking, he noticed, principally of her children and of the past; the time she had spent at home before her marriage seemed to be present in her mind.
"I wonder," she said once, thoughtfully, "what sort of girl I was? I can only remember that I was such a happy girl! Doyouremember that I was a specially self-indulgent or frivolous one? But I am afraid you would not tell me, if you did."
"My dear," he said, in response, "you were a natural, simple, joyous creature, and a great pleasure to us."
She gave his hand a little pressure.
"Ican remember that you were always good to me," she said. "I used to think you were a little curious about me, and wondered what I would do in the future. Now it is my turn to wonder if I am at all what you thought I would be?"
He did not reply at once, and then spoke slowly.
"There seemed so many possibilities," he said. "Yes; I thought it possible that you might be—what you are."
It was as he said this that there returned to his mind the thought which had occupied it before her entrance. He had been thinking then of something he wished to tell her, before she heard it from other quarters, and which he felt he could tell her at no more fitting time than when they were alone. It was something relating to Laurence Arbuthnot, and, curiously enough, she paved the way for it by mentioning him herself.
"Did you say Laurence was here to-night?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied, "he was so good as to dine with me."
"He would say that you were so good as to invite him," she said. "He is very fond of coming here."
"I should miss him very much," he returned, "if he should go away."
She looked up quickly, attracted by his manner.
"But there is no likelihood of his going away," she said.
"I think," he answered, "that there may be, and I wished to speak to you about it."
He refrained from looking at her; he even delicately withdrew his hand, so that if hers should lose its steadiness he might be unconscious of it.
"Go away!" she exclaimed,—"from Washington? Laurence! Why should you think so? I cannot imagine such a thing."
"He does not imagine it himself yet," he replied. "Iam going to suggest it to him."
Her hand was still upon his knee, and he felt her start.
"You are!" she said; "why and how? Do you think he will go? I do not believe he will."
"I am not sure that he will," he answered, "but I hope so; and what I mean is that I think it may be possible to send him abroad."
She withdrew her hand from his knee.
"He won't go," she said; "I am sure of it."
He went on to explain himself, still not looking at her.
"He is wasting his abilities," he said; "he is wasting his youth; the position he is in is absurdly insignificant; it occurred to me that if I used, with right effect, the little influence I possess, there might finally be obtained for him some position abroad, which would be at least something better, and might possibly open a way for him in the future. I spoke to the Secretary of State about it, and he was very kind, and appearedinterested. It seems very possible, even probable, that my hopes will be realized."
For a few seconds she sat still; then she said, abstractedly:
"It would be very strange to be obliged to live our lives without Laurence; they would not be the same lives at all. Still, I suppose it would be best for him; but it would be hard to live without Laurence. I don't like to think of it."
In spite of his intention not to do so, he found himself turning to look at her. There had been surprise in her voice, and now there was sadness, but there was no agitation, no uncontrollable emotion.
"Can it be," he thought, "that she is getting over it? What does it mean?"
She turned and met his eyes.
"But, whether it is for the best or not," she said, "I don't believe he will go."
"My dear," he said, "you speak as if there was a reason."
"I think there is a reason," she answered, "and it is a strong one."
"What is it?" he asked.
"There is some one he is beginning to be fond of," she replied; "thatis the reason."
He kept his eyes fixed upon her.
"Some one he isbeginningto be fond of?" he repeated.
"I don't know how it will end," she said. "I am sometimes afraid it can only end sadly, but there is some one he would find it hard to leave, I am sure."
The professor gradually rose in his chair until he was sitting upright.
"I wish," he said, "that you would tell me who it is."
"I do not think he would mind your knowing," she answered. "It seems strange you have not seen. It is Agnes Sylvestre."
The professor sank back in his chair, and looked at the bed of coals in the grate.
"AgnesSylvestre!" he exclaimed; "AgnesSylvestre!"
"Yes," she said; "and in one sense it is very hard on him that it should be Agnes Sylvestre. After all these years, when he has steadily kept himself free from all love affairs, and been so sure that nothing could tempt him, it cannot be easy for him to know that he loves some one who has everything he has not—all the things he feels he never will have. He is very proud and very unrelenting in his statement of his own circumstances, and he won't try to glaze them over when he compares them with hers. He is too poor, she is too rich—even if she loved him."
"Even!" said the professor. "Is it your opinion that she does not?"
"I do not know," she answered. "It has seemed to me more probable that—that she liked Colonel Tredennis."
"I thought so," said the professor. "I must confess that I thought so; though, perhaps, that may have been because my feeling for him is so strong, and I have seen that he"—
"That he was fond of her?" Bertha put in as he paused to reflect.
"I thought so," he said again. "I thought I was sure of it. He sees her often; he thinks of her frequently, it is plain; he speaks of her to me; he sees every charm and grace in her. I have never heard him speak of any other woman so."
"It would be a very suitable marriage," said Bertha; "I have felt that from the first. There is no one more beautiful than Agnes—no one sweeter—no one more fit"—
She pushed her seat back from the hearth and rose from it.
"The fire is too warm," she said. "I have been sitting before it too long."
There was some ice-water upon a side table and she went to it and poured out a glass, and drank it slowly. Then she took a seat by the centre-table and spoke again, as she idly turned over the leaves of a magazine without looking at it.
"When first Agnes came here," she said, "I thought of it. I remember that when I presented Philip to her I watched to see if she impressed him as she does most people."
"She did," said the professor. "I remember his speaking of it afterward, and saying what a charm hers was, and that her beauty must touch a man's best nature."
"That was very good," said Bertha, faintly smiling. "And it was very like him. And since then," she added, "you say he has spoken of her often in the same way and as he speaks of no one else?"
"Again and again," answered the professor. "The truth is, my dear, I am fond of speaking of her myself, and have occasionally led him in that direction. I have wished for him what you have wished."
"And we have both of us," she said, half sadly, "been unkind to poor Laurence."
She closed the magazine.
"Perhaps he will go, after all," she said. "He may see that it is best. He may be glad to go before the year is ended."
She left her book and her chair.
"I think I must go now," she said, "I am a little tired."
He thought that she looked so, and the shadow which for a moment had half lifted itself fell again.
"No," he thought, "she has not outlived it, and this is more bitter for her than the rest. It is only natural that it should be more bitter."
When he got up to bid her good-night she put a hand upon either of his shoulders and kissed him.
"I am glad I was not invited to the grand party,dear," she said, "I have liked this better. It has been far better for me."
There were only a few yards of space between her father's house and her own, and in a few seconds she had ascended the steps and entered the door. As she did so she heard Richard in the parlor, speaking rapidly and vehemently, and, entering, found that he was talking to Colonel Tredennis. The colonel was standing at one end of the room, as if he had turned around with an abrupt movement; Richard was lying full length upon a sofa, looking uneasy and excited, his cushions tumbled about him. They ceased speaking the moment they saw her, and there was an odd pause, noticing which she came forward and spoke with an effort at appearing at ease.
"Do you know that this seems like contention?" she said. "Are you quarrelling with Richard, Colonel Tredennis, or is he quarrelling with you? And why are you not at the reception?"
"We are quarrelling with each other violently," said Richard, with a half laugh. "You arrived barely in time to prevent our coming to blows. And why are you not at the reception?"
Bertha turned to Tredennis, who for a moment seemed to have been struck dumb by the sight of her. The memories the slender gray figure had brought to the professor rushed back upon him with a force that staggered him. It was as if the ghost of something dead had suddenly appeared before him and he was compelled to hold himself as if he did not see it. The little gray gown, the carelessly knotted kerchief,—it seemed so terrible to see them and to be forced to realize through them how changed she was. He had never seen her look so ill and fragile as she did when she turned to him and spoke in her quiet, unemotional voice.
"This is the result of political machination," she said. "He has forgotten that we were not invited. Being absorbed in affairs of state he no longer keeps an account of the doings of the giddy throng."
Then he recovered himself.
"You were not invited," he said. "Isn't there some mistake about that? I thought"—
"Your impression naturally was that we were the foundation-stone of all social occasions," she responded; "but this time they have dispensed with us. We were not invited."
"Say that you did not receive your invitation," put in Richard, restlessly. "The other way of stating it is nonsense."
She paused an instant, as if his manner suggested a new thought to her.
"I wonder," she said, slowly, "if therecouldbe a reason; but no, I think that is impossible. It must have been an accident. But you," she added to Tredennis, "have not told me why you are not with the rest of the world."
"I came away early," he answered. "I was there for an hour."
He was glad that she did not sit down; he wished that she would go away; it would be better if she would go away and leave them to themselves again.
"It was very gay, I suppose," she said. "And you saw Agnes?"
"I have just left her," he replied.
"You ought to have stayed," she said, turning away with a smile. "It would have been better than quarrelling with Richard."
And she went out of the room and left them together, as he had told himself it would be best she should.
He did not look at her as she ascended the staircase; he stood with his back to the open door, and did not speak until he heard her go into the room above them. Then he addressed Richard.
"Do you understand me now?" he said, sternly. "This is the beginning!"
"The beginning!" exclaimed Richard, with a half frantic gesture. "If this is the beginning—and things go wrong—imagine what the end will be!"
The room Bertha had entered was the nursery. In the room opening out of it Jack and Janey slept in their small beds. Upon the hearth-rug lay a broken toy. She bent to pick it up, and afterward stood a moment holding it in her hand without seeing it; she still held it as she sank into a chair which was near her.
"I will stay here a while," she said. "This is the best place for me."
For a few minutes she sat quite still; something like a stupor had settled upon her; she was thinking in a blind, disconnected way of Agnes Sylvestre. Everything would be right at last. Agnes would be happy. This was what she had wished—what she had intended from the first—when she had brought them together. It was she who had brought them together. And this was the plan she had had in her mind when she had done it; and she had known what it would cost her even then. And then there came back to her the memory of the moment when she had turned away from them to pour out Laurence's coffee with hands she could not hold still, and whose tremor he saw and understood. Poor Laurence! he must suffer too! Poor Laurence!
She looked down suddenly at the broken toy in her hand.
"I will stay here more," she said. "It is better here. There is nothing else! And if I were a good woman I should want nothing else. If I had only not spoken to Agnes,—that was the mistake; if she will only forget it!Someone should be happy—someone! It will be Agnes."
She got up and went into the children's room, and knelt down by Janey's bed, laying the toy on the coverlet. She put her arms around the child and spoke her name.
"Janey!" she said. "Janey!"
The child stirred, opened her eyes, and put an arm sleepily about her neck.
"I said my prayers," she murmured. "God bless mamma and papa—and everybody! God bless Uncle Philip!"
Bertha laid her face near her upon the pillow.
"Yes," she said, brokenly. "You belong to me and I belong to you. I will stay here, Janey—with you."
Sometimes during the winter, when she glanced around her parlor on the evenings of her receptions Bertha felt as if she was in a waking dream,—so many people of whom she seemed to know nothing were gathered about her; she saw strange faces on every side; a new element had appeared, which was gradually crowding out the old, and she herself felt that she was almost a stranger in it. Day by day, and by almost imperceptible degrees at first, various mysterious duties had devolved upon her. She had found herself calling at one house because the head of it was a member of a committee, at another because its mistress was a person whose influence over her husband it would be well to consider; she had issued an invitation here because the recipients must be pleased, another there because somebody was to be biassed in the right direction. The persons thus to be pleased and biassed were by no means invariably interesting. There was a stalwart Westerner or so, who made themselves almost too readily at home; an occasional rigid New Englander, who suspected a lack of purpose in the atmosphere; and a stray Southerner, who exhibited a tendency towards a large and rather exhaustive gallantry. As a rule, too, Bertha was obliged to admit that she found the men more easily entertained than the women, who were most of them new to their surroundings, and privately determined to do themselves credit and not be imposed upon by appearances; and when this was not the case were either timorously overpowered by a sense of their inadequacy to the situation, or calmly intrenched behind a shield of impassive composure, more discouraging thanall else. It was not always easy to enliven such material: to be always ready with the right thing to say and do; to understand, as by inspiration, the intricacies of every occasion and the requirements of every mental condition, and while Bertha spared no effort, and used her every gift to the best of her ability, the result, even when comparatively successful, was rather productive of exhaustion, mental and physical.
"They don't care about me," she said to Arbuthnot one night, with a rueful laugh, as she looked around her. "And I am always afraid of their privately suspecting that I don't care about them. Sometimes when I look at them I cannot help being overpowered by a sense of there being a kind of ludicrousness in it all. Do you know, nearly every one of them has a reason for being here, and it is never by any chance connected with my reason for inviting them. I could give you some of the reasons. Shall I? Some of them are feminine reasons, and some of them are masculine. That woman at the end of the sofa—the thin, eager-looking one—comes because she wishes to accustom herself to society. Her husband is a 'rising man,' and she is in love with him, and has a hungry desire to keep pace with him. The woman she is talking to has a husband who wants something Senator Planefield may be induced to give him—and Senator Planefield is on his native heath here; that showy little Southern widow has a large claim against the government, and comes because she sees people she thinks it best to know. She is wanted because she has a favorite cousin who is given patriotically to opposing all measures not designed to benefit the South. It is rather fantastic when you reflect upon it, isn't it?"
"You know what I think about it without asking," answered Arbuthnot.
"Yes, you have told me," was her response; "but it will be all over before long, and then—Ah! there is Senator Blundel! Do you know, it is always a relief to me when he comes;" and she went toward him with abrighter look than Arbuthnot had seen her wear at any time during the entire evening.
It had taken her some time herself to decide why it was that she liked Blundel and felt at ease with him; in fact, up to the present period she had scarcely done more than decide that she did like him. She had not found his manner become more polished as their acquaintance progressed; he was neither gallant nor accomplished; he was always rather full of himself, in a genuine, masculine way. He was blunt, and by no means tactful; but she had never objected to him from the first, and after a while she had become conscious of feeling relief, as she had put it to Arbuthnot, when his strong, rather aggressive, personality presented itself upon the scene. He was not difficult to entertain, at least. Finding in her the best of listeners he entertained himself by talking to her, and by making sharp jokes, at which they both laughed with equal appreciation. He knew what to talk about too, and what subjects to joke on; and, however apparently communicative his mood might be, his opinions were always kept thriftily in hand.
"He seems to talk a good deal," Richard said, testily; "but, after all, you don't find out much of what he really thinks."
Bertha had discovered this early in their acquaintance. If the object in making the house attractive to him was that he might be led to commit himself in any way during his visits, that object was scarcely attained. When at last it appeared feasible to discuss the Westoria lands project in his presence, he showed no unwillingness to listen or to ask questions; but, the discussion being at an end, if notes had been compared no one could have said that he had taken either side of the question.
"He's balancing things," Planefield said. "I told you he would do it. You may trust him not to speak until he has made up his mind which side of the scale the weight is on."
When these discussions were being carried on Berthahad a fancy that he was more interested than he appeared outwardly. Several times she had observed that he asked her questions afterward which proved that no word had dropped on his ear unheeded, and that he had, for some reason best known to himself, reflected upon all he had heard. But their acquaintance had a side entirely untouched by worldly machinations, and it was this aspect of it which Bertha liked. There was something homely and genuine about it. He paid her no compliments; he even occasionally found fault with her habits, and what he regarded as the unnecessary conventionality of some of her surroundings; but his good-natured egotism never offended her. A widower without family, and immersed in political business, he knew little of the comforts of home life. He lived in two or three rooms, full of papers, books, and pigeon-holes, and took his meals at a hotel. He found this convenient, if not luxurious, and more than convenience it had never yet occurred to him to expect or demand. But he was not too dull to appreciate the good which fell in his way; and after spending an hour with the Amorys on two or three occasions, when he had left the scene of his political labors fagged and out of humor, he began to find pleasure and relief in his unceremonious visits, and looked forward to them. There came an evening when Bertha, in looking over some music, came upon a primitive ballad, which proved to be among the recollections of his youth, and she aroused him to enthusiasm by singing it. His musical taste was not remarkable for its cultivation; he was strongly in favor of pronounced melody, and was disposed to regard a song as incomplete without a chorus; but he enjoyed himself when his prejudices were pandered to, and Bertha rather respected his courageous, if benighted, frankness, and his obstinate faith in his obsolete favorites. So she sang "Ben Bolt" to him, and "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls," and others far less classical and more florid, and while she sang he satungracefully, but comfortably, by the fire, his eyes twinkling less watchfully, the rugged lines of his blunt-featured face almost settling into repose, and sometimes when she ended he roused himself with something like a sigh.
"Do you like it?" she would say. "Does it make you forget 'the gentleman from Indiana' and the 'senator from Connecticut'?"
"I don't want to forget them," he would reply with dogged good-humor. "They are not the kind of fellows it is safe to forget, but it makes my recollections of them more agreeable."
But after a while there were times when he was not in the best of humors, and when Bertha had a fancy that he was not entirely at ease or pleased with herself. At such times his visits were brief and unsatisfactory, and she frequently discovered that he regarded her with a restless and perturbed expression, as if he was not quite certain of his own opinions of her.
"He looks at me," she said to Richard, "as if he had moments of suspecting me of something."
"Nonsense!" said Richard. "What could he suspect you of?"
"Of nothing," she answered. "I think that was what we agreed to call it."
But she never failed to shrink when the twinkling eyes rested upon her with the disturbed questioning in their glance, and the consciousness of this shrinking was very bitter to her in secret.
When her guest approached her on the evening before referred to, she detected at once that he was not in a condition of mind altogether unruffled. The glances he cast on those about him were not encouraging, and the few nods of recognition he bestowed were far from cordial; his hair stood on end a trifle more aggressively than usual, and his short, stout body expressed a degree of general dissatisfaction which it was next to impossible to ignore.
Bertha did not attempt to ignore it.
"I will tell you something before you speak to me," she said. "Something has put you out of humor."
He gave her a sharp glance, and then looked away over the heads of the crowd.
"There is always enough to put a man out of humor," he said. "What a lot of people you have here to-night! What do they come for?"
"I have just been telling Mr. Arbuthnot some of the reasons," she answered. "They are very few of them good ones. You came hoping to recover your spirits."
"I came to look at you," he said.
He was frequently blunt, but there was a bluntness about this speech which surprised her. She answered him with a laugh, however.
"I am always worth looking at," she said. "And now you have seen me"—
He was looking at her by this time, and even more sharply than before. It seemed as if he was bent upon reading in her face the answer to the question he had asked of it before, but he evidently did not find it.
"There's something wrong with you," he said. "I don't know what it is. I don't know what to make of you."
"If you could make anything of me but Bertha Amory," she replied, "you might do a service to society; but that is out of the question, and as to there being something wrong with me, there is something wrong with all of us. There is something wrong with Mr. Arbuthnot, he is not enjoying himself; there is something wrong with Senator Planefield, who has been gloomy all the evening."
"Planefield," he said. "Ah! yes, there he is! Here pretty often, isn't he?"
"He is a great friend of Richard's," she replied, with discretion.
"So I have heard," he returned. And then he gave his attention to Planefield for a few minutes, as if hefound him also an object of deep interest. After this inspection he turned to Bertha again.
"Well," he said, "I suppose you enjoy all this, or you wouldn't do it?"
"You are not enjoying it," she replied. "It does not exhilarate you as I hoped it would."
"I am out of humor," was his answer. "I told you so. I have just heard something I don't like. I dropped in here to stay five minutes, and take a look at you and see if"—
He checked himself and rubbed his upright hair impatiently, almost angrily.
"I am not sure that you mightn't be enjoying yourself better," he said, "and I should like to know something more of you than I do."
"If any information I can give you"—she began.
"Come," he said, with a sudden effort at better humor, "that is the way you talk to Planefield. We are too good friends for that."
His shrewd eyes fixed themselves on her as if asking the unanswered question again.
"Come!" he said. "I'm a blunt, old-fashioned fogy, but we are good, honest friends,—and always have been."
She glanced across the room at Richard, who was talking to a stubborn opposer of the great measure, and making himself delightful beyond description. She wished for the moment that he was not quite so picturesque and animated; then she gathered herself together.
"I think we have been," she said. "I hope you will believe so."
"Well," he answered, "I shouldn't like to believe anything else."
She thought that perhaps he had said more than he originally intended; he changed the subject abruptly, made a few comments upon people near them, asked a few questions, and finally went away, having scarcely spoken to any one but herself.
"Why did he not remain longer?" Richard asked afterward, when the guests were gone and they were talking the evening over.
"He was not in the mood to meet people," Bertha replied. "He said he had heard something he did not like, and it had put him out of humor. I think it was something about me."
"About you!" Richard exclaimed. "Why, in Heaven's name, about you?"
"His manner made me think so," she answered, coldly. "And it would not be at all unnatural. I think we may begin to expect such things."
"Upon my word," said Richard, starting up, "I think that is going rather far. Don't you see"—with righteous indignation—"what an imputation you are casting on me? Do you suppose I would allow you to do anything that—that"—
She raised her eyes and met his with an unwavering glance.
"Certainly not," she said, quickly. And his sentence remained unfinished, not because he felt that his point had been admitted, but because, for some mysterious reason, it suddenly became impossible for him to say more.
More than some of late, when he had launched into one of his spasmodic defences of himself, he had found himself checked by this intangible power in her uplifted eyes, and he certainly did not feel his grievances the less for the experiences.
Until during the last few months he had always counted it as one of his wife's chief charms that there was nothing complicated about her, that her methods were as simple and direct as a child's. It had never seemed necessary to explain her. But he had not found this so of late. He had even begun to feel that, though there was no outward breach in the tenor of their lives, an almost impalpable barrier had risen between them. He expressed no wish she did not endeavor to gratifyher manner toward himself, with the exception of the fleeting moments when he had felt the check, was entirely unchanged; the spirit of her gayety ruled the house, as it had always done; and yet he was not always sure of the exact significance of her jests and laughter. The jests were clever, the laugh had a light ring; but there was a difference which puzzled him, and which, because he recognized in it some vague connection with himself, he tried in his moments of leisure to explain. He had even spoken of it to Colonel Tredennis on occasions when his mood was confidential.
"She used to be as frank as a child," he said, "and have the lightest way in the world; and I liked it. I am a rather feather-headed fellow myself, perhaps, and it suited me. But it is all gone now. When she laughs I don't feel sure of her, and when she is silent I begin to wonder what she is thinking of."
The thing she thought, the words she said to herself oftenest were: "It will not last very long." She said them over to herself at moments she could not have sustained herself under but for the consolation she found in them. Beyond this time, when what she faced from day to day would be over, she had not yet looked.
"It is a curious thing," she said to Arbuthnot, "but I seem to have ceased even to think of the future. I wonder sometimes if very old people do not feel so—as if there was nothing more to happen."
There was another person who found the events of the present sufficient to exclude for the time being almost all thought of the future. This person was Colonel Tredennis, who had found his responsibilities increase upon him also,—not the least of these responsibilities being, it must be confessed, that intimacy with Mr. Richard Amory of which Bertha had spoken.
"He is very intimate with Richard," she had said, and she had every reason for making the comment.
At first it had been the colonel who had made theadvances, for reasons of his own, but later it had not been necessary for him to make advances. Having found relief in making his first reluctant half-confidences, Richard had gradually fallen into making others. When he had been overpowered by secret anxiety and nervous distrust of everything, finding himself alone with the colonel, and admiring and respecting above all things the self-control he saw in him,—a self-control which meant safety and silence under all temptations to betray the faintest shadow of a trust reposed in him,—it had been impossible for him to resist the impulse to speak of the trials which beset him; and, having once spoken of them, it was again impossible not to go a little farther, and say more than he had at first intended. So he had gone on from one step to another until there had come a day when the colonel himself had checked him for an instant, feeling it only the part of honor in the man who was the cooler of the two, and who had nothing to risk or repent.
"Wait a moment," he said. "Remember that, though I have not asked questions so far, I am ready to hear anything you choose to say, but don't tell me what you might wish you had kept back to-morrow."
"The devil take it all," cried Richard, dashing his fist on the table. "I must tell some one, or I shall go mad." But the misery which impelled him notwithstanding, he always told his story in his own way, and gave it a complexion more delicate than a less graceful historian might have been generous enough to bestow. He had been too sanguine and enthusiastic; he had made mistakes; he had been led by the duplicity of a wily world into follies; he had been unfortunate; those more experienced than himself had betrayed the confidence it had been only natural he should repose in them. And throughout the labyrinth of the relation he wound his way,—a graceful, agile, supple figure, lightly avoiding an obstacle here, dexterously overstepping a barrier there, and untouched by any shadow but that of misfortune.
At first he spoke chiefly of the complications which bore heavily upon him; and these complications, arising entirely from the actions of others, committed him to so little that the colonel listened with apprehension more grave than the open confession of greater blunders would have awakened in him. "He would tell more," he thought, "if there were less to tell."
The grim fancy came to him sometimes as he listened, that it was as if he watched a man circling about the edge of a volcano, drawing nearer and nearer, until at last, in spite of himself, and impelled by some dread necessity, he must plunge headlong in. And so Richard circled about his crater: sometimes drawn nearer by the emotion and excitement of the moment, sometimes withdrawing a trifle through a caution as momentary, but in each of his circlings revealing a little more of the truth. The revelations were principally connected with the Westoria lands scheme, and were such in many instances as the colonel was not wholly unprepared to hear. He had not looked on during the last year for nothing, and often, when Richard had been in gay good spirits, and had imagined himself telling nothing, his silent companion had heard his pleasantries with forebodings which he could not control. He was not deceived by any appearance of entire frankness, and knew that he had not been told all until one dark and stormy night, as he sat in his room, Richard was announced, and came in pallid, haggard, beaten by the rain, and at the lowest ebb of depression. He had had a hard and bitter day of it, and it had followed several others quite as hard and bitter; he had been fagging about the Capitol, going the old rounds, using the old arguments, trying new ones, overcoming one obstacle only to find himself confronted with another, feeling that he was losing ground where it was a matter of life and death that he should gain it; spirits and courage deserting him just when he needed them most; and all this being over, he dropped into his office to findawaiting him there letters containing news which gave the final blow.
He sat down by the table and began his outpourings, graceful, attractive, injured. The colonel thought him so, as he watched him and listened, recognizing meanwhile the incompleteness of his recital, and making up his mind that the time had come when it was safer that the whole truth should be told. In the hours in which he had pondered upon the subject he gradually decided that such an occasion would arrive; and here it was.
So at a certain fitting juncture, just as Richard was lightly skirting a delicate point, Tredennis leaned forward and laid his open hand on the table with a curious simplicity of gesture.
"I think," he said, "you had better tell me the whole story. You have never done it yet. What do you say?"
The boarder on the floor below, who had heard him walking to and fro on the first New Year's night he had spent in Washington, and on many a night since, heard his firm, regular tread again during the half hour in which Richard told, in fitful outbursts, what he had not found himself equal to telling before. It was not easy to tell it in a very clear and connected manner; it was necessary to interlard it with many explanations and extenuations, and even when these were supplied there was a baldness about the facts, as they gradually grouped themselves together, which it was not agreeable to contemplate; and Richard felt this himself gallingly.
"I know how it appears to you," he said; "I know how it sounds! That is the maddening side of it,—it looks so much worse than it really is! There is not a man living who would accuse me of intentional wrong. Confound it! I seem to have been forced into doing the very things it was least natural to me to do! Bertha herself would say it,—she would understand it. She is always just and generous!"
"Yes," said the colonel; "I should say she had been generous."
"You mean that I have betrayed her generosity!" cried Richard. "That, of course! I expected it."
"You will find," said the colonel, "that others will say the same thing."
He had heard even more than his worst misgivings had suggested to him, and the shock of it had destroyed something of his self-control. For the time being he was in no lenient mood.
"I know what people will say!" Richard exclaimed. "Do you suppose I have not thought of it a thousand times? I know what I should say if I did not know the circumstances. It is the circumstances that make the difference."
"The fact that they are your circumstances, and not another man's," began Tredennis; but there he checked himself. "I beg your pardon," he said, coldly. "I have no right to meet your confidence with blame. It will do no good. If I can give you no help, I might better be silent. There were circumstances which appeared extenuating to you, I suppose."
He was angered by his own anger, as he had often been before. He told himself that he was making the matter a personal cause, as usual; but how could he hear that her very generosity and simplicity had been used against her by the man who should have guarded her interests as his first duty, without burning with sharp and fierce indignation.
"If I understand you," he said, "your only hope of recovering what you have lost lies in the success of the Westoria scheme?"
"Yes," answered Amory, with his forehead on his hands, "that is the diabolical truth!"
"And you have lost?"
"Once I was driven into saying to you that if the thing should fail it would mean ruin to me. That was the truth, too."
The colonel stood still.
"Ruin to you!" he said. "Ruin to your wife—ruin to your children—serious loss to the old man who"—
"Who trusted me!" Richard finished, gnawing his white lips. "I see it in exactly the same light myself, and it does not make it easier to bear. That is the way a thing looks when it fails. Suppose it had succeeded. It may succeed yet. They trusted me, and, I tell you, I trusted myself."
It was easy to see just what despair would seize him if the worst came to the worst, and how powerless he would be in its clutches. He was like a reed beaten by the wind, even now. A sudden paroxysm of fear fell upon him.
"Great God!" he cried. "It can't fail! What could I say to them—how could I explain it?"
A thousand wild thoughts surged through Tredennis' brain as he heard him. The old sense of helplessness was strong upon him. To his upright strength there seemed no way of judging fairly of, or dealing practically with, such dishonor and weakness. What standard could be applied to a man who lied agreeably in his very thoughts of himself and his actions? He had scarcely made a statement during the last hour which had not contained some airy falsehood. Of whom was it he thought in his momentary anguish? Not of Bertha—not of her children—not of the gentle old scholar, who had always been lenient with his faults. It was of himself he was thinking—of Richard Amory, robbed of his refined picturesqueness by mere circumstance and placed by bad luck at a baleful disadvantage!
For a few minutes there was a silence. Richard sat with his brow upon his hands, his elbows on the table before him. Tredennis paced to and fro, looking downward. At length Richard raised his head. He did so because Tredennis had stopped his walk.